Middle Age: A Romance

A heroic death on the river shatters an affluent suburb, laying bare the private obsessions and secret infatuations of the living.

In Salthill-on-Hudson, a half-hour train ride from Manhattan, everyone is rich, beautiful, and -- though they look much younger -- middle-aged. But when Adam Berendt, a charismatic, mysterious sculptor, dies suddenly in a brash act of heroism, shock waves rock the town.

The relics he leaves behind seem modest, ascetic, and — to those who catalog his hidden bank ac...