I've had this book by Reuben Merliss in my library since 1994, passed down by my mother. During this time of self-quarantine, I'm making it a point to read every book on my shelves, and this one was next. I found it a little challenging to understand at first, as the dialog is a bit choppy. Still, once I got going, I found the writing style interesting. I figured out that the author was leaving a significant portion of the character's thoughts and feelings to the reader's imagination. The story of a medical student, who comes to Los Angeles to find his absent father after his mother's suicide, is a study in the seedy side of human nature. Yet as Dan McDermott makes his way through four years of rigorous schooling while working as a pharmacist, he survives several complicated relationships and copes with his own nervous depression. Eventually, he manages to create an accidental family while discovering his humanity along the way. The characters were sometimes hard to like, but they were real and had many interesting layers to peel away. In the end, I couldn't put it down and highly recommend this one to others. ( )