A beautifully scrupulous, intricately detailed novel about joy and despair, anti-Semitism and assimilation, and like a great photograph, it seems to miss nothing, and to catch its subject in all his complexity.--Charles Baxter Evocative psychological fiction based on the true story of renowned photographer Philippe Halsman, a man Adolph Hitler knew by name, who Sigmund Freud wrote about in 1931, and who put Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Life magazine. Surviving an episode that presages the horrors of WWII, Halsman transforms himself from a victim of rampant anti-Semitism into a purveyor of...

"IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING "made me laugh out loud, and it also left me deeply moved."--John Burnham Schwartz, author of "Reservation Road" and "Northwest Corner" Isidore is a brilliant man, driven in equal measure by grief at his young mother's death, rage at his distant, abusive father, and his own fierce ambitions. When Isidore becomes a doctor, and a father himself, the cycle of grief continues. His son Leo is left behind too young, and also grows to be a doctor. The story becomes Leo's, an alternately heartbreaking and hilarious account of his cross-country road trip with his younger...