From the best-selling author Joe Meno, a moving novel about the impossibility of fate and family

"Meno knows how to make you love his characters, want what they want. But don't think he's going to let things turn out well for them."
--New York Times Book Review

"Joe Meno writes with a humor and tenderness that sometimes doesn't feel made for this bleak hour of history . . . Or. Maybe it's exactly what we need right now? . . . Meno reminds us that though family's do, in fact, fuck you up, sometimes they're the only thing that can put you back together."
--Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2022

"At heart, these are good people, in tough circumstances, making the same mistakes that many of us make. Will they allow themselves the chance to obtain happiness? A family of gifted individuals can't seem to stop sabotaging their own lives, but you'll want them to."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Though the family saga is relatively simple, the characters' passions and their desire for fulfillment is made achingly real. This ought to please Meno's fans and win him some more."
--Publishers Weekly

Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions.

Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life. Doomed by fate, a family history of failure, an odd mother, an absent father, and a younger brother with a peculiar fondness for catastrophes, the two siblings have all but given up.

But when an illness forces Isobel and her three-year-old daughter to move back into the family home, Aleks becomes deeply involved in the endless challenges that surround his relatives. Once Isobel begins playing cello again, Aleks comes to see a world of possibility and wonder in the lives of his extraordinarily complicated family.

Told in Aleks's exuberant voice, and full of as much comedy as tragedy, this entertaining novel asks, Is it ever truly possible to separate our fates from those we've come to love?