Since he retired, former Chicago Police Department detective Larry Klinger has gradually discovered a deep well of unprocessed grief for his late son who died at the age of six. Now 66 years old, Klinger finally realizes that he needs help to deal with a trauma that occurred nearly 40 years earlier. He joins a group of men who, like him, are struggling to deal with the death of a child.

When a murder occurs, Klinger himself becomes a suspect. What unfolds is a story of love and loss woven into a murder mystery and an examination of a key question faced by countless men today: What is a father's core duty in our complex modern world?

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"Realizing his pain has only grown deeper as decades pass, [Klinger] seeks solace in group therapy and becomes friends with a handful of men, all of whom have suffered the trauma of losing a child. The author affectingly portrays the bond Klinger forms with his brothers in commiseration: 'And it was less that he felt like he knew the personalities, hopes, or fears of the men beyond what he was learning each week, he explained, than a sense that they all knew something about themselves and one another that they all desperately wished they did not know.' Dan McVie, one of them, frets anxiously over the safety of his daughter, Andrea-the boyfriend she recently dumped, Marco Bala, is an angry man with violent tendencies, and he stubbornly stalks her....

"The narrative is a forlornly painful one-all of the principal characters are tormented by unspeakable loss, and their personal traumas are portrayed with extraordinary insight. The author's prose is generally plain and foursquare-the power of Klinger's melancholy is only increased by the spare simplicity of his mode of expression. Still, Manos is more than capable of poetic incisiveness-he describes Marco's obsession with Andrea memorably: 'But as subsequent days passed, a growing matrix of suspicions about Andrea's social life preyed on Marco's mind like a cracked tooth.'... Klinger is a richly complex character... The author wraps a psychologically astute tale of emotional conflict in a crime drama, the latter just as intelligently conceived as the former. This is a remarkable novel-poignant and provocative.

"A stunningly bold novel composed with great authorial confidence."