Percussion

Morty Hacker hooked himself up to his portable oxygen bottle whenever he left home, which wasn't often. He'd been saving his energy for this reunion and his gigantic Cadillac had a special cradle beside the driver's seat to accommodate the oxygen. Maggie was frightened that the looping coils of plastic tubing connecting Morty wit his life support might loop themselves around the brake pedal or the accelerator and help to support an end to several lives besides Morty's. 'Who'd want to live like that?' she'd asked Veronica and Veronica had said, 'A person who wants to live.'When Anna Maher accompanies her mother Maggie and grandmother Veronica to the United States for a war veterans' reunion, she is struck by the American way of denying death. The three women have a terrifying brush with their own mortality when a destructive earthquake hits Los Angeles.On the other side of the Pacific, the remaining members of the Maher family face disturbances of a different kind. Brian's liver is failing to cope with his publican's lifestyle, his second daughter's marriage has split dramatically, and his grandson has high-octane plans of his own.A sharply hilarious but very human new novel by the author of A Mortality Tale .