eric gabriel lehman

One hot New York City summer in the 1970s, the lives of three very different people - each uncomfortable with their surrounds and struggling to find a place where they can feel a sense of belonging - are forever changed.

Raymond, an overly cerebral 17 year old, lives in the Bronx with his increasingly estranged parents. He's decided that the time has come for him to fall in love even if he is soure why or with which gender and grapples with the conflicting directions in which he is pulled by his desires and fears. As his parents become increasingly estranged, his mother leaves for a trip to Israel leaving Raymond and his father housemates in an apartment in which neither feels at home.

Jerome, one of the legion of unrecognized poets marginally employed as a delivery man Seven Wonders Gourmet Foods, cannot rid himself of his obsession for the woman he loved and lived with - until she threw him out when he uncovered her secret past. His mentor - and sole friend - is the aging, erudite Maurice Rose, who - like Jerome - is about to thrown out of his home.

Lester, Raymond's maternal uncle, is the middle aged owner of Seven Wonders Gourmet Foods and an unsuccessful suburbanite living on the edges of New York City. In a family and area were success and status are everything, he must confront the miseries of his failing business, a tense home life, and a persistent obscene caller who knows a bit too much about his wife.

Drawn together by chance, circumstance, and mysterious woman with a secret in her past, their lives' intersect, collide, pull apart, and irreversibly change.