At age 60, Robert Tagliaferro returns to his Italian/American heritage in Utica, New York, to uncover and discover a wealth of knowledge, linking him to the past.

Raised in Utica, New York, Frank Lentricchia is Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of Literature at Duke University. He is the author of a number of scholarly works, including After the New Criticism, Criticism and Social Change, and Modernist Quartet, and has written for numerous magazines, including Harper's, Lingua Franca, and the London Review of Books. His previous novels are Johnny Critelli and The Knifemen, and he has also written a memoir, The Edge of Night.