Summary

Chapter 1 – The novel opens with an anecdote in which a former lawyer named Alger Hiss was released from prison after serving a term for lying under oath. The year was 1957. Since Hiss was no longer able to practice law, one of his friends secured him a job at a company called Feathercombs, Inc., which manufactured and sold women’s hair barrettes. In order to make room for Hiss, the president of the company fired a quiet salesman who happened to be the grandfather of the novel’s narrator. In response to this firing, the narrator’s grandfather went into a rage and attempted to strangle the president of the company with a phone cord. It is then revealed that the narrator’s grandfather, now an old man, is dying of bone cancer and has been prescribed an opioid pain medication called Dilaudid. A...