"This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.

"A tragicomic novel about death and devotion"--

"A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all... With her distinctive, irresistible wordplay and singular wry humor and wisdom, Lorrie Moore has given us a magic box of longing and surprise as she writes about love and rebirth and the pull towards life. Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told, which take us through a trapdoor on an imagined journey to the tragic-comic landscape that is, unmistakably, the world of Lorrie Moore."--Book jacket.