This Close

"A middle-aged woman, irritated with her wealthy young neighbor's yard improvements, offers a corner of her lawn to a Croatian immigrant who wants a vegetable garden. A daughter accompanies her father to Israel, where, seeing a new side of him away from her mother, she makes an unusual bargain. In twelve stories about the difficult, sometimes impermeable boundaries between friends, neighbors, and family relations, Jessica Francis Kane explores just how close we can come to love, success, happiness, and forgiveness."--P. [4] of cover.