Fiction. Irena Bozinska, beset by difficulties with love, language, and change, is a mathematician who has recently emigrated from Poland to America. She works as an attendant for an aging jazz musician who longs for one last moment of musical glory in spite of his arthritic fingers. Jack Kaufman, cared for by a mysteriously sad young woman, is a Chicago gangster nearing the end of a colorful, violent life. Joined together by the simple circumstance of sharing the same apartment building, these four lonely people begin to form surprising, life-changing bonds with one another.

Author City: MILL VALLEY, CA USA

Maxine Chernoff was born in Chicago, Illinois, in the year of 1952, where she grew up, and attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is an American novelist, writer, poet, academic and literary magazine editor. Maxine Chernoff is a professor and Chair of the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University. With her husband, Paul Hoover, she edits the long-running literary journal NEW AMERICAN WRITING. She is the author of six books of fiction and nine books of poetry, most recently WITHOUT (Shearsman Books, 2012), TO BE READ IN THE DARK (Omnidawn, 2011), THE TURNING (Apogee Press, 2008), and AMONG THE NAMES (Apogee Press, 2005). She currently lives in Mill Valley, California, with her husband and three children.