Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of the The House of God comes an ambitious novel about the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, doctors and patients, the past and the present, and love and death... Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and “plagued by breakage,” he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town. There's one odd catch: he must live in her house for one year and thirteen days. As he struggles with his decision—to stay and meet the terms of the will or return to his life in Italy—Orville reconnects with family, reunites with former friends, and comes to terms with old rivals and bitter memories. In the process he’ll discover his own history, as well as his mother’s, and finally learn what it really means to be a healer, and to be healed.
Download and start listening now!
About Samuel Shem
Samuel Shem is the pen name of Stephen Bergman, a doctor, novelist, playwright, and activist. A Rhodes Scholar, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for three decades. His books include Mount Misery, the 2008 National Best Book Award winner The Spirit of the Place, and Fine. With his wife, Janet Surrey, he wrote the hit off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, which won the Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism in 2007, and the nonfiction book We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men, winner of the 1999 Boston Interfaith Council’s Paradigm Shift Award. He lives in Boston and Costa Rica.
About Sean Runnette
Sean Runnette, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has also directed and produced more than two hundred audiobooks, including several Audie Award winners. He is a member of the American Repertory Theater company and has toured the United States and internationally with ART and Mabou Mines. His television and film appearances include Two If by Sea, Cop Land, Sex and the City, Law & Order, the award-winning film Easter, and numerous commercials.