The story takes place in 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Jay Follet, an ordinary man approaching middle age, lives with his wife Mary and their two small children, Rufus, who is about six, and Catherine, who is almost four. One night he gets an anxious telephone call from his brother Ralph asking him to the bedside of their sick father, who appears to be at death's door. Jay agrees to go, and in an excellent chapter in which Mary makes breakfast for him before he leaves, I got a clear view of the kind of relationship they have. The father's death turns out to be a false alarm, but death is still around the corner: Returning home, Jay is killed in a car accident. The rest of the novel demonstrates the sudden impact on Mary and her family.
The novel has many sections talking about young Rufus's memories of growing up and perspective on his father's death, the seriousness and finality of which he is not quite old enough to understand. His expectations of a "surprise" that turns......
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Approximate Word Count: 1461
Approximate Pages: 6 (260 words per double-spaced page) |