Ben is an artist closing in on forty, and it's hard for him to be sure about the past. His parents are both dead, and his brother, who has mental issues, is a lousy source of information. So when Ben finds himself with a particularly persistent memory that keeps nagging at him, he doesn't know where to turn to answer the question: Did his mother really assassinate a prominent neo-Nazi? Stuart Ross sends Ben ranging through childhood summers at an Ontario cottage, teenage alienation in a Toronto suburb, a disastrous college career, and the calamity that precipitates his brother's institutionalization-as he tries to sort through the events of his life, both real and surreal.