I have read another book by Julia Glass before and enjoyed it, so downloaded this from the Library onto my iPad (the way I have been reading lately, now that I know how to work "the system.")
The novel opens as Percy Darling, the widower, returns from his daily run. While he is 70 years old, he keeps up a fitness regime of running and swimming. He lives in a big old house, where he lived with his wife who he lost 30 years ago in an accidental drowning (more about that later.)
He has two daughters who he has raised by himself; one is a successful oncologist and the other a not-so-successful mother of two divorcee, who is just starting to work for a prestigious nursery school in the barn on Percy's property that used to be his wife's dance studio.
The plot has many disparate elements and characters that all end up related and interwoven. Percy is very close to Robert, his grandson, who is a student at Harvard (Percy used to be a Librarian at the Widener Library on that campus), and who falls in with an ecoterrorist group through his roommate, Turo. Percy also falls for a local artist, Sarah, and helps in her discovery that she has breast cancer.
A lot of "bad" things happen in this bucolic suburban community on the outskirts of Boston and the novel deals well with the social issues, the gulf between the classes and our excessive modern society. It's really a very satisfying and thought-provoking novel.
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