From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less.'A riveting and fascinating novel full of stunning observations and brilliant moments of truth and sympathy.' Colm TóibínIt is 1953, and in San Francisco Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself caring for both her husband's fragile health and her polio-afflicted son. Then one morning someone from her husband's past appears on their doorstep. His arrival throws all the certainties by which Pearlie has lived into doubt, and is brought face to face with the desperate measures people are prepared to take to escape the confines of their lives.

Andrew Sean Greer was born in Washington, DC, the son of two scientists. He studied writing at Brown University and received his MFA from the University of Montana. He soon moved to San Francisco and began to publish in magazines such as Esquire, The Paris Review and The New Yorker before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me.His first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, was published to much acclaim in 2001, and his second book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, 2004 is an American bestseller. He lives in San Francisco.