Chance: A Novel
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014:Eldon Chance is a neuropsychiatrist in crisis. Though he’s developed a successful career “listening to the woes of others,” he’s rarely attuned to his own. Turns out, he’s got plenty. At the start of this smart, twisty, and addictive book, Dr. Chance’s life--“the life he’d so carefully arranged for himself”--is falling apart. His costly divorce forces him to sell his antique furniture, a decision that introduces him to the remarkable character named Big D, a hulking, unhinged, tattooed, self-proclaimed Iraq war vet turned furniture restorer who becomes buttoned-up Chance’s unlikely friend, mentor, and potential savior. Something of an amateur philosopher (as well as a self-taught Samurai), Big D is drawn to people’s frozen lake obsessions--the things they want so bad they’re willing to walk to the center of a frozen lake, “where the ice is thinnest.” Chance’s frozen-lake desire is one of his patients, the mysterious and dangerously manipulative Jaclyn Blackstone--or, more accurately, her sexier alter-ego, Jackie Black. In his reckless pursuit of Jaclyn/Jackie, Chance confronts her corrupt and abusive husband, an Oakland homicide detective, Romanian thugs, and his own secret past. --Neal Thompson