First published 1970
Sam Kahan stands at his kitchen window, watching his two young children play in the courtyard below. Since his wife's death six months ago, the simplest conversations with them feel like crossing a minefield. His daughter Rebecca, eight years old, has stopped speaking to him entirely. His son David, ten, asks questions Sam cannot answer about why their mother had to die. Sam works long hours at his jewelry repair shop to pay the bills, but each evening he returns to an apartment that feels more like a battlefield than a home. The children test his patience with small rebellions. Rebecca hides under her bed when he calls for dinner. David picks fights with neighborhood kids and comes home bloody. Sam wants to reach them, to bridge the gulf that grief has carved between them, but every attempt seems to push them further away. The three of them circle each other like strangers, bound by blood but separated by sorrow they cannot name.
Genres: fiction, grief, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief
Period: 20th-century
160 pages · Paperback · Sphere
Content warnings: death