The Half Brother

The Half Brother is a truly gripping, epic novel, hugely ambitious in scope and utterly compelling, a wonderful mixture of surreal comedy and touching intimacy. In stunning detail and elegant prose it relates the lives of four generations of a far from ordinary family. It opens on May 8, 1945, when 20-year-old Vera, hoping to celebrate with her mother and grandmother the end of World War II, is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that crime is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a boxer. Barnum, Vera's other son born several years later, and Fred form a bizarre but special relationship. "I should have been your father," Fred tells Barnum, "instead of the fool who says he is." Spanning 50 years, filled with a wonderful galaxy of finely etched characters, and structurally brilliant, The Half Brother has been both a literary sensation and a best-seller wherever it has been published.