FROM THE PUBLISHER

Through a suspenseful pattern of dramatic flashbacks the shattered life of Joshua Shapiro is reassembled. Now middle-aged, Joshua has overcome his inauspicious beginnings in Montreal's Jewish ghetto to become a celebrated television writer, yet he is an unhappy man. Incapacitated by a freak accident, anguished by the disappearance of his wife, Joshua is beleaguered by the press and tormented by the ghosts of his youth.

SYNOPSIS

While hospitalized, Joshua Shapiro reviews his life. Joshua is married and his wife, Pauline, has brought him into the world of country clubs and senators. But everything is going wrong: financial and sex scandals arise, and Joshua finds himself out of the frying pan of his past and into the fire of the present.

FROM THE CRITICS

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times