A book of almost 900 pages had better grab you and have something going to keep you going. I forget who suggested this book to me. Somewhat intimidated by its size I decided to give it a couple of chapters at least. Since I read in the evening when I tend to be dream challenged, such a book gets a real test.

        Well, I picked up the book one evening and was 67 pages along before I reluctantly turned to our evening bedtime custom of an ounce of brandy and talk. I could have kept reading.

        The book hooked me on several levels. First, credit Lamb with being a good writer. He can tell a story. At times I would stop and wonder how he could weave such a book together. Or did he weave two books together? That it all comes out as one piece is impressive.

        Second, the characters and the plot had authenticity. Sometimes stories seem overly contrived, to go beyond plausibility. Not everyone knows twins, much less a twin whose brother is schizophrenic. The role of siblings and family dynamics when one sibling is the center of concern is opened with clarity.

        Third, as a pastor and sometime counselor, I found the concerns about appropriate medical care, institutionalization, therapy, etc., bringing memories of people who haunted my office from the streets of the inner city. The reminder that illness of any type is never individual, but always social.

        Fourth, the revealing insights keep bubbling forth from the first chapter to the last. The reader will be impacted as a child, a grandchild, a grandparent, a parent, a sibling, a friend, a professional worker. The book is full of thoughts that sneak up on you and hit you in your heart.

        Fifth, there is a quality that makes this almost a case study in dealing with a schizophrenic personality. I looked in the List of Sources to confirm what I suspected; that Wally Lamb did extensive research in the writing of this book.

        Sixth, the reader is led through therapy. It is not only professionally authentic, but personally insightful.

        I thought I would need to renew the book in order to complete it. It called me in from other activities so frequently that it was completed in less than a week. I fear that I rushed it. I was eager to reach its surprising and satisfying conclusion. The last paragraph is worthy of printing on my wall of special quotations. Dominick concludes his story with these words:

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true. (p. 897)