From the Orange Prizewinning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood comes a sharply witty and impeccably written (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) novel featuring a therapist attempting to unlock the most difficult cases of her lifethose of her son and of her mother.

Anyone whos ever had trouble persuading a teenager or an elderly parent to open up will recognize Lornas dilemma during the three days she finds herself alone in a remote lakeside cottage with her mutely miserable son and her impenetrable mother. Despite her training as a clinical social worker, and her arsenal of therapeutic techniques, shes resisted at every turn as she tries to understand whats made the two people most important to her go silent.

Though silence has always marked Lornas family. Her father was deaf. Her mother, Marika, abandoned Lorna and her brother when they were children. No explanation was ever offered. Nor why Marika resurfaced eighteen years ago to invite Lorna and her infant son, Adam, to Vermont for a strained reunion. A relationship, of sorts, has followedan annual Thanksgiving visit, during which Marika sits taciturnly among the guests at Lornas table, agreeing only to be seen to exist.

But now its Adam who wont talk. Home from college and suffering over something he wont disclose, hes so depressed that he refers to himself as A for Anti-Matter. So, when shes summoned to Vermont because Marika has had a fall, Lorna sees an opportunity to get Adam out of the house and maybe also a chance to finally connect with her mother. What she never anticipated was that grandson and grandmother would form a bond, and leave her out of it.

How do you care for people you cant understand, and who dont want to be understood?

Suspenseful, poignantly funny, and beautifully incisive, The Blue Window explores the ways people misperceive each other, and how secrets and silence, wielded and guarded, exert their power over familiesand what luminous, frightening, and tender possibilities might come forth, once those secrets are challenged.

Suzanne Berne is an elegant, psychologically astute novelist (Tom Perrotta), whose new book reveals what happens to people who hide from themselves, and the act of imagination it takes to find them.