The Book of Susan: A Novel

In the spring of 1907 a young lawyer finds himself in the cluttered, grease‑smudged world of the Eureka Garage in New Haven, where the bristling hands of a furious mechanic named Bob Blake loom large. While observing a petty dispute over a missing bolt, he is drawn to a small, plaid‑clothed girl with dark, terrier‑like eyes who offers a dinner pail to the laborer beneath his car. Her shy, precise manners and the way she slips away hint at a childhood lived in the shadow of a volatile father and a mother whose memory has already faded.

The narrative unfurls through courtroom recollections and fragmented family histories, revealing a marriage that ended abruptly, a new, uneasy household, and the subtle tensions that bind the characters. As the narrator pieces together Susan’s fragmented past, the story paints a vivid portrait of early‑twentieth‑century life, where ordinary chores become the stage for deeper questions of identity, loyalty, and the lingering echo of lost parental love.