Herbert Gold's new novel is a funny, sad romp through the San Francisco he has staked out as his primal territory, filled with flimflam artists, lost summers of love and, most of all, fathers on the run, looking for a little bit of mercy and poetic meaning to their lives. — Jerome Charyn, Author
In the course of an impressive career as a writer, Herbert Gold has demonstrated many gifts, among them his talent for making high drama of ordinary events, ordinary people. — Chicago Tribune Book World
Herbert Gold gives his stories a wry, bright air of wonder – he is a born storyteller. — New York Times
One of the most gifted writers in America. — Detroit News
The intriguing new story from prizewinning author Herbert Gold, his twentieth novel in more than six decades, takes us on a journey of lost souls seeking attachment, revenge and redemption at the edge of San Francisco Bay.
When impoverished court translator Dan Kasdan lets lawyer and con artist Ferd Conway suck him into a shady property deal in Haiti, he's unprepared for the life-changing complications that follow. First, an unknown daughter has just turned up at Dan's door in the Tenderloin, nineteen years after a forgotten encounter in the Summer of Love. She, her half-employed husband and their disabled baby son need his care, attention and cash. All this just as Dan's swollen prostate is confronting him with his own mortality.
It's bad enough when his cohort manipulates Dan into a love affair with Petal, a young woman his daughter's age. But when Ferd starts pursuing Dan's daughter as lover and would-be father figure, Ferd's sleazy disloyalty changes Dan forever.
If a psychopath really can fall in love, it had better not be with the wrong person. That could lead to murder among old friends.
