Lawyer Bill Daley follows up an unusual phone call from stage actress Becca Lang by attending her show.

One late afternoon, November 1996, stage actress Becca Lang makes a strange call to Bill Daley's law office.

She says she is looking for help regarding an eviction, Daley tries to beg off, saying it is not his area of practice, but the call intrigues him enough to keep him listening, and then to track her play Unwed Blood down, and he books two tickets for that Wednesday night.

Her life seems to have included ambiguous abuse, possibly incestuous, involving her father and her older brother Bruce, but it's unclear if Becca thinks there is anything wrong.

Similarly, Becca returns to Unwed Blood as if the slap witnessed by Daley was just an aberration, not worth being concerned about.

Tuesday morning, at the end of his run, Daley sees Bruce Lang sitting on his step, waiting for him.

They talk, and eventually Daley tells Bruce of the time he saw Ruley, during diving lessons for Della, slap her brutally.

This absorbing and unsettling novel, his first in 14 years, may finally bring him the wider recognition he deserves.Literary heavyweight McElroy returns with his eighth novel.... To [his] credit, the characters are complex and become more fascinating the more we learn about their backgrounds and interests.

Not an easy read in part because of McElroy's writing style, this novel nevertheless would be appropriate for academic fiction collections, as it is a mature modern work by an unusual contemporary writer.