Laura W. (Pharmtoxgirl) reviewed on 5/31/2006 + 52 more book reviews

The hero, Jack McCall, describes himself as a man on the run from his past: the suicide of his beloved wife; the destructive influence of his icy, manipulative mother and mean, bullying, alcoholic father; the betrayal of his youthful ideals, his faith in the Catholic Church, his boyhood friends. Conroy takes on these emotionally laden issues in chapters so direct and powerful that readers will be moved by his intimacy with the material, and perhaps astonished by his authority over it. Conroy meshes complex plot lines with ease. Jack, a food and travel writer, fled with his toddler daughter, Leah, to Rome in 1982 in the wake of his wife Shyla's suicidal jump from a bridge in Charleston, S.C., and her parents' subsequent lawsuit to deny him custody of Leah. He returns home some years later because his mother is dying of leukemia. In addition to becoming embroiled in family tension, he begins a slow process of reconciliation with Shyla's parents, who eventually tell him the stories of their respective Holocaust experiences; with his first love, Ledare Ashley, now a scriptwriter employed by their youthful chum, Mike Hess, to write a screenplay of their growing-up years; and with his parents and siblings. He witnesses the return to Waterford of another friend, Jordan Elliot, who has been presumed dead for 18 years after he was accused of murder during a protest against the Vietnam War, and who was betrayed by the fourth member of their boyhood clan, Capers Middleton, who is now running for governor of South Carolina.

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