First published 2009
Jake celebrates his sixty-something birthday aboard a small aircraft, gazing down at the terrain that shaped his entire existence. Below him spreads the geography of his childhood memories, his marriage, his career, and everything he once held dear. The flight becomes a journey through time as much as space. Jake faces a cruel reality. His wife has died. His son sits behind prison bars. His mind betrays him more each day as Alzheimer's disease steals his past piece by piece. The same landscapes that once anchored his identity now blur together as his memory fails him. Jake struggles to hold onto the fragments of who he was while confronting who he is becoming. The airplane ride transforms into a final reckoning with a life that slips away like the ground beneath him.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: United States
Period: 21st Century
328 pages · Paperback · Jonathan Cape/Random House
Content warnings: mental-illness