This is the story of Levi Pepperfield, who tries to navigate his future as a retired English professor while indulging in the sorrow of lost possibilities that define his past. It's about the intersection of parallel worlds, of age and youth, of teacher and student, of man and woman, of real and fictional characters. Levi needs to discover his guide, and with the help of a female rabbi who explains to him the concepts of a klipah that has imprisoned his spirit, and tikkun ha'nafesh--the repairing of the soul; of a former student who challenges him to apply his teaching of truth and beauty to his own life; of Esther Greenwood, who steps out of Sylvia Plath's novel to help him revision his life; and of the ghosts of Walt Whitman and Richard Brautigan, Levi finds his guide and gets a second chance at his own life. Perhaps.

Matthew Manera was born in quite possibly the wrong century, but at least came of age in the best part of the one in which he did appear. He was incorrectly named by his parents, a fault he corrected in his thirty-ninth year. His only passion in life was music, which he pursued both academically, but also, and more importantly, as a singer/songwriter/guitarist until arthritis shouted itself into his fingers, at which point he turned to writing--poetry, essays, short and long fiction. He's still that guy.

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