abandonment

Poor Doug Parker. At 29, he’s living a life he never anticipated. And it's great. Surprisingly great. Great, until his wife Haley goes off and dies, leaving him alone to deal with his 16-year-old stepson, Haley's beefed-up ex-husband, and a crushing sadness that prevents him from really living.

Tropper has a gift for realistically portraying emotion. In the titles I’ve sampled, Tropper’s main characters are stuck in a suspended state, whether it be grief, or shock, surprise, bewilderment, or all of the above. And there is always a caste of wonderful characters, mostly dysfunctional family

Cathy Ferris is sitting at her lunch table with her friends minding her own business when all of a sudden another student, Tommy, approaches her calling her by the name Murielle and insisting that she is his lost cousin. The story comes out that five years ago Tommy's aunt and uncle had swindled millions of dollars from their clients five years ago and had fled the country before being apprehended. They left behind their only daughter, Murielle, Tommy's cousin. While the aunt and uncle remain at large, Murielle, age 10 at the time, was bundled off into foster care and hasn't been heard