An elegant and haunting novel of love and family, The Tell demands that we reconsider our notions of marriage—duty, compromise, betrayal, and the choice to stand by or leave the ones we love

For Mira and Owen, a young, childless couple living in Providence, marital and financial troubles are simmering just below the surface—until Wilton Deere, a wealthy, over-the-hill actor, moves in next door. With no friends to speak of and an estranged daughter to win back, the desperate Wilton inserts himself into the younger couple’s lives. As stresses at work and home take their toll, Mira disappears secretly to casinos and slot machines, accompanied by Wilton. In time, her escapism turns to full-on addiction, threatening a marital bond that is fraying by the day. Adrift and alone, Owen finds himself with nowhere to turn but to the beautiful and mysterious Anya, Wilton’s daughter, who is testing her ability to trust her father after years apart.

As Owen and Mira’s marriage reaches what can only be the breaking point, Wilton suddenly disappears. The two must come together to find him and confront the new reality of their relationship —complete with sobering lessons learned but perhaps, if they can weather a storm of their own making, none the weaker for it.

The Tell is a book about risks: of marriage, of dependence, of responsibility, of living in the past. Told with equal parts suspense, sympathy, and psychological complexity, it shows us the intimate and shifting ways we reveal ourselves before we act, and what we assume yet don’t know about the people we love.

The characters in this extraordinary debut collection fi nd themselves caught between commitment and responsibility. In one story, a wife struggles to care for her adulterous husband after a car accident. In another, a husband finds himself drawn to his wife's former lover. In language that is eloquent and precise, these stories speak to the mysteries of friendship and marriage. This startling and powerful collection is illuminated by keen insight and hope.

Longlisted for the NBCC Award for AutobiographyA deeply reflective memoir weaving together the personal story of Hester Kaplan’s acclaimed biographer father and his fraught effect on her artistic development with a rich portrait of twentieth century intellectual life and a meditation on family intimacy, identity, and the art of writingTwice Born opens with the death of Hester’s father, Justin Kaplan, known for his award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Despite his relatively prolific output, Justin rarely wrote, or said, much about himself—even to his daughter. Standing at his open casket, Hester has the realization that while alive, her father never looked her in the eyes. Hester takes on the challenge of piecing together as intimate a biography of her own father as possible, comparing his story to the lives of his biographical subjects and dissecting the various personas he presents to the world—from which the name “dad,” “daddy,” or even “father” is conspicuously and painfully absent. Parallel to Justin’s story runs Hester’s own journey of development as a writer and a thinker, which begins in the shadow of not only her talented father, but also her novelist mother, and the fiercely protective union the two of them had built, often to the exclusion of their own children. In sensitive, intimate writing, Kaplan paints a rich picture of the twentieth century literary world that she grew up in, all while reflecting on the deceptive nature of memory, the loneliness of creative pursuits, and the dovetailing paradoxes of biographical and autobiographical writing.

An elegant and haunting novel of love and family, The Tell demands that we reconsider our notions of marriage—duty, compromise, betrayal, and the choice to stand by or leave the ones we love

For Mira and Owen, a young, childless couple living in Providence, marital and financial troubles are simmering just below the surface—until Wilton Deere, a wealthy, over-the-hill actor, moves in next door. With no friends to speak of and an estranged daughter to win back, the desperate Wilton inserts himself into the younger couple’s lives. As stresses at work and home take their toll, Mira disappears secretly to casinos and slot machines, accompanied by Wilton. In time, her escapism turns to full-on addiction, threatening a marital bond that is fraying by the day. Adrift and alone, Owen finds himself with nowhere to turn but to the beautiful and mysterious Anya, Wilton’s daughter, who is testing her ability to trust her father after years apart.

As Owen and Mira’s marriage reaches what can only be the breaking point, Wilton suddenly disappears. The two must come together to find him and confront the new reality of their relationship —complete with sobering lessons learned but perhaps, if they can weather a storm of their own making, none the weaker for it.

The Tell is a book about risks: of marriage, of dependence, of responsibility, of living in the past. Told with equal parts suspense, sympathy, and psychological complexity, it shows us the intimate and shifting ways we reveal ourselves before we act, and what we assume yet don’t know about the people we love.

The characters in this extraordinary debut collection fi nd themselves caught between commitment and responsibility. In one story, a wife struggles to care for her adulterous husband after a car accident. In another, a husband finds himself drawn to his wife's former lover. In language that is eloquent and precise, these stories speak to the mysteries of friendship and marriage. This startling and powerful collection is illuminated by keen insight and hope.

Longlisted for the NBCC Award for AutobiographyA deeply reflective memoir weaving together the personal story of Hester Kaplan’s acclaimed biographer father and his fraught effect on her artistic development with a rich portrait of twentieth century intellectual life and a meditation on family intimacy, identity, and the art of writingTwice Born opens with the death of Hester’s father, Justin Kaplan, known for his award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Despite his relatively prolific output, Justin rarely wrote, or said, much about himself—even to his daughter. Standing at his open casket, Hester has the realization that while alive, her father never looked her in the eyes. Hester takes on the challenge of piecing together as intimate a biography of her own father as possible, comparing his story to the lives of his biographical subjects and dissecting the various personas he presents to the world—from which the name “dad,” “daddy,” or even “father” is conspicuously and painfully absent. Parallel to Justin’s story runs Hester’s own journey of development as a writer and a thinker, which begins in the shadow of not only her talented father, but also her novelist mother, and the fiercely protective union the two of them had built, often to the exclusion of their own children. In sensitive, intimate writing, Kaplan paints a rich picture of the twentieth century literary world that she grew up in, all while reflecting on the deceptive nature of memory, the loneliness of creative pursuits, and the dovetailing paradoxes of biographical and autobiographical writing.