Barrett Meeks

A 38-year-old gay Brooklyn resident, Barrett Meeks has had a series of disappointments and false starts in both his love life and his work life. Living in the Bushwick apartment he shares with his older brother Tyler and Tyler's terminally ill fiance Beth, he's a deep thinker, loves literature, and has an unusually close bond with his brother Tyler. For work, he "moves merchandise" in a store co-owned by Beth and her best friend Liz. Raised Catholic, an experience of seeing a celestial light in Central Park leads him on a quest for his abandoned spirituality, and answers to questions about life, death, and meaning.

The novel reveals that when Barrett and Tyler were young, their mother was killed by a lightning strike on a golf course. Their father took up with someone new and moved away, prompting Barrett and Tyler to develop an unusually close and...