"When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in the springtime of 2011
how can she imagine it might bring her estranged dad Ethan crashing back into her life? Ethan
is an ex-con and recovering addict who even in his more honest moments has difficulty seeing
outside himself. But now he's starting to fear that Jolie's in the kind of trouble her mom
Sarah could never understand. Convinced that he is the only one who can save her he decides
to offer up for Jolie the whole of his life its hard-won achievements and most harrowing
mistakes - in hope of breaking through. So begins the doubled journey of Jolie and Ethan: child
and adult apart and together different yet the same. Their story as it unfolds will test
Jolie's bond with her grandparents and Ethan's with his sister. It will forge unlikely
alliances with a smooth-talking teacher and a doubt-filled probation officer. It will confront
father and daughter with the turbulence of youthful romance (Jolie's with a mysterious admirer
Ethan's with Sarah herself). And around each bend new vistas beckon: from group therapy in
recession-era Bellevue to a mid-'90s Howard Johnson on Maryland's Eastern Shore from the world
of fading surf breaks to the heights of the Brooklyn Bridge and beyond. The Second Coming is an
utterly timely work of fiction that explores an enduring mystery: whether we can ever really
outrun the past if it's possible to hold onto what anchors us while still chasing something
new. Full of compassion full of music and intimacy-full of blues-this beautifully attuned
novel renews the extraordinary promise of this writer's "boundless and unflagging talents"
(Michiko Kakutani New York Times)"--
