Is there any father worse than Abra­ham? Are there any unhap­pi­er fam­i­lies than the first fam­i­ly of Genesis?

In the fol­low-up to his acclaimed debut, The Bend of the World, Jacob Bacharach enlivens these exis­ten­tial ques­tions in a mad­cap tale that replaces the bib­li­cal Ur with New York City, the land of Canaan with the rust-belt riv­er val­leys of west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, hilar­i­ous­ly trans­pos­ing the bib­li­cal sto­ry of our first patri­archs into a mod­ern world even mad­der than the ancient Mid­dle East.

Flee­ing from a failed rela­tion­ship, Isabel Gior­dani leaves Man­hat­tan for Pitts­burgh to accept a job at the under­achiev­ing non­prof­it Future Cities Insti­tute and insin­u­ates her­self into the aim­less lives of Isaac May­er and his father, Abbie. An archi­tect turned crooked real estate devel­op­er, Abbie claims to be chas­ing after an unex­pect­ed heav­en­ly vision―one that inevitably embroils the May­er fam­i­ly with­in the polit­i­cal and famil­ial machi­na­tions of Fayette Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia. Bacharach explores the per­pet­u­al­ly fraught themes of love, fam­i­ly, God, and real estate in an irrev­er­ent and unnerv­ing­ly ten­der tale.

Vis­it­ing Scribe: Jacob Bacharach

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