A Kind of Careful Brightness

1938, and the nation is still reeling from the concussive effects of the Great Depression. Men out of work, jobs that never came back. Richard Meywether has reached the stage where life inexorably demands a firm course. But unemployed, casually alcoholic, and living alone in a converted hotel in Chicago, Meywether can find no solid ground.When an invitation arrives from Todd Hanover, his old college roommate, to attend a New Year’s Eve party at his home in the very town Meywether himself left under a shroud of horrible loss more than a decade before, there is little excuse not to accept-not even the distant memory, now dimly resurrected, of a stolen moment with Dottie Hanover, and the unwelcome suspicion that a remote place in his youthful heart may yet sustain an impossible desire.As in the work of Richard Yates, John Cheever, and William Maxwell, this intimate, unforgettable novel is a compassionate portrayal of flawed characters and the quiet desperation that thwarts even the most earnest of passions.