The Second Coming

When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in the springtime of 2011, how can she imagine it might bring her estranged dad, Ethan, crashing back into her life? Ethan is an ex-con and recovering addict who even in his more honest moments has difficulty seeing outside himself. But now he's starting to fear that Jolie's in the kind of trouble her mom, Sarah, could never understand. Convinced that he is the only one who can save her, he decides to offer up for Jolie the whole of his life, its hard-won achievements and most harrowing mistakes - in hope of breaking through. So begins the doubled journey of Jolie and Ethan: child and adult, apart and together, different yet the same. Their story as it unfolds will test Jolie's bond with her grandparents and Ethan's with his sister. It will forge unlikely alliances with a smooth-talking teacher and a doubt-filled probation officer. It will confront father and daughter with the turbulence of youthful romance (Jolie's with a mysterious admirer, Ethan's with Sarah herself). And around each bend, new vistas beckon: from group therapy in recession-era Bellevue to a mid-'90s Howard Johnson on Maryland's Eastern Shore, from the world of fading surf breaks to the heights of the Brooklyn Bridge and beyond. The Second Coming is an utterly timely work of fiction that explores an enduring mystery: whether we can ever really outrun the past, if it's possible to hold onto what anchors us while still chasing something new. Full of compassion, full of music and intimacy-full of blues-this beautifully attuned novel renews the extraordinary promise of this writer's boundless and unflagging talents (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)--