At the edge of the desert, in Los Angeles, Jay grew up in the postwar boom of hopeful plenty, in a family not unlike those everyone watched on TV. The youngest of five children, he found a second set of parents in his oldest brother and sister, whose great advantage was that they were far cooler. John, in particular, was his hero, teaching him to fish and shoot, to ride motorcycles, to want to be a teenager, a soldier, a man.

Such dreams aren't made to come true, or not for long. Despite this glorious promise, the family was eventually battered by silence, resentment, misdirection, and, years later, John's death in a horrible explosion. Dolan confronts and redeems the complications and failures of his family by capturing expectant childhood and adult regret, by granting literary permanence to a personal history -- at once elusive, distressing, and magical -- at the heart of the American dream.