For the first time, one of New York City's major resident authors spins a breathtakingly immediate, intimate family novel centered around the September 11, 2001 attacks Thirty-four and decidedly independent, Renata has been known to keep her involvement with people-men in particular-to a minimum. Even her job at the library keeps her at a remove from the uncertainty of trusting other people with the stories of her past. Instead she loses herself in language, ever measuring the integrity of words against lived experience. Then Jack, patient, solid, and sexy, enters her life. One bright September morning, as Renata walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, the sky bursts open and change comes without warning. It quickly becomes clear in the days ahead that Renata cannot keep memories of her buried past-of a twin sister, a betrayal, of family truths too ugly to acknowledge-at bay. Written with tremendous compassion and imagination, informed by an abiding love for the people of New York, and crafted by a master storyteller at the height of her powers, The Writing on the Wall is a profoundly engaging novel about how one woman saw-and we all continue to ponder-the defining event of our time.