Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s: There's Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop; widow Ava Bifulco, whose daily grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava's son, a high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout returning to the old neighborhood; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl who longs to break free from Brooklyn. Uniting them all are the dead, and in this sensitive neo-noir novel by the author of Gravesend, these lost souls must face up to the past before they can move forward.