Ambassador of the Dead

One Sunday morning, Nick Blud, a successful Boston physician, is home in bed when he receives a phone call from Ada Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. Ada summons Nick back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened-exactly what, no one is willing to say. To find out, Nick sets off on a journey through the past, his own as well as that of Ada's son, Alex, who long has struggled to escape his family's legacy of violence.

A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, Ambassador of the Dead introduces Ada Kruk, a mother like no other, at once Mary and Medea, Sarah and Medusa.

A study of ambitions gone awry and appetites too easily gratified, this novel is also an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the price of love.