Five novels and one companion volume. One family, thirty years, and the small arrangements that hold a house together until somebody asks what they cost. A surgeon with an unbroken record and a locked room. A woman who counted a whole town and left one line in a register. A postmaster carrying the letter he chose not to deliver. A family that buys its life in sanctioned hours. A man with no surname, looking for the word that is his. And the wife who was told last, who wrote all of it down.
