About The Book

Description

One winter night, Peter Lake—master mechanic and second-story man—attempts to rob a fortresslike mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter, a simple and uneducated man caught in a battle of good vs. evil, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead. "Utterly extraordinary . . . A piercing sense of the beautiful arising from narrative and emotional fantasy is everywhere alive in the novel . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled."— New York Times Book Review