City of Strangers: A Novel [Paperback]

Faith, family, and the weight of history intersect in this remarkable debut from a rising literary talent

A cold, gray Sunday dawns on New York City to find Paul Metzger trudging through the winter streets to visit his past. He goes first to see his estranged, decades-older half-brother; then his dying father, whose notorious early life still haunts his children; and finally the ex-wife he cannot help but continue to love. But a fourth encounter-violent, unexpected-sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change Paul's life, as well as the family he's struggled so long to understand.

Ian MacKenzie's stirring and lyrical debut is a story of a family inalterably fractured by its past, of a man who refuses to believe that what is done cannot be undone, and of a world that insists-catastrophically, in the end-otherwise. In City of Strangers, Ian MacKenzie tells, in direct, beautiful, and convincing language, a story that examines the surface tensions and deeper sources of pressure in today's uncertain world. City of Strangers exhibits a maturity well beyond the writer's years. He is a talent to watch.
-Uzodinma Iweala, author of the national bestseller Beasts of No NationIan MacKenzie graduated from Harvard in 2004 and lives in Brooklyn, New York. City of Strangers is his first novel.

INTRODUCTION

It is a frigid February in 2006. Paul Metzger shuttles between Brooklyn, where he lives, and Manhattan; he has troubles. His ninety-six-year-old father, unconscious in a hospital, lingers near death. Paul’s once promising career as a writer is also on life support. His half brother Ben, a hedge fund manager defending himself against a securities probe, wants little to do with him. He still loves his ex-wife Claire, but she has a new life, climbing the professional lalƒ