Day for Night

As a child, Beverly Rabinowitz fled Europe with her mother during World War II. Almost half a century later, while she is vacationing in Florida, a chance encounter leads to a strangely lucid moment in which she senses that her father, long believed to have been killed during the war, is close by. It's the first of many seemingly random events that are guiding her toward a startling discovery.

In the course of Frederick Reiken's provocative, intricate novel, Beverly will learn that her story is part of something larger. Because the story is not hers alone--it's also the story of a comatose teenage boy in Utah, an elusive sixties-era fugitive, an FBI agent pursuing a twenty-year obsession, a Massachusetts veterinarian who falls in love on a kibbutz in Israel, and a host of other characters. DAY FOR NIGHT illuminates how disparate, far-flung people can be connected, and how the truth of those bonds can upend entire lives. Each chapter is a small universe of its own, and together they form a dazzling whole.

Frederick Reiken is the author of two previous novels, The Odd Sea (1998) and The Lost Legends of New Jersey (2000). His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and his essays in the anthology Living on the Edge of the World (2008). He has worked as a reporter and columnist and is currently a member of the writing faculty at Emerson College.