Making a Better World

From the author of The Mystical Adventures of Stavros Papadakis comes a comic novel about family, faith, and second chances.Oscar Perilloux, a middle-age widower and cash-strapped artist, is trying to be good: a good father, a good brother, a good son. But it's not easy. His conniving, ne'er-do-well mother has just been kicked out of a retirement home and needs a place to live. His rich, egomaniacal brother is dating the woman he secretly desires. And his seven-year-old daughter, whose innocence Oscar is trying mightily to preserve, is becoming more and more interested in the grown-up world. Meanwhile, Oscar's childhood pal, whose life reached its high-point in high school, becomes the object of a social-media firestorm that threatens to destroy the harmony of their idyllic New Hampshire hometown. A mix of satire and romance, family drama and social commentary, the novel touches on a number of today's hot-button issues: internet cancel culture, woke capital, the crisis in the Catholic Church, the treatment of the elderly, and the raising of children. Witty and big-hearted, Making a Better World takes a playful look at the way we live now.