Summary

Chapter 1: "Checking Out," New York - 2012

The novel opens with the narrator, Hannah Goff, taking her father, Lawrence Groff, to lunch at an Italian restaurant in New York City. She had just published her first book, a memoir about her marriage. They’re eating black squid, over which a waiter shaves white truffles from a bell jar.

Hannah’s father says he lives in the present, the opposite of Hannah, who “remembers things.” It was the last time they’d seen each other. Hannah is writing about it a year later. Shortly after that lunch, Hannah flies to Israel to write about David Bellen, a murdered Israeli writer and poet. He wrote a book portraying the biblical King David as a gangster. Following that story leads Hannah to other stories, which lead back to her father.

Hannah describes the book she’s writing...