Library JournalIn this debut collection from novelist Barbash (The Last Good Chance), also author of the best-selling nonfiction On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal, the characters are as familiar as friends and family members: In "Birthday Girl," a young girl out walking her dog is hit by a car on a dark country road. "The Women" introduces a son who comes to live with his recently widowed father and encounters in a close and personal way the women who pursue his father. Barbash shows a deep empathy for people with unlikable qualities, as seen in "Somebody's Son," in which the targets of a real estate con preying on the elderly come to know their antagonist better than he knows himself.
