Birch Browsings: A John Burroughs Reader (Nature Library, Penguin)

Pete Flowers is facing forty. A shrewdly successful entrepreneur, a long-distance runner who can still turn heads, Pete leads a comfortable, private life. His last relationship, with a witty and impetuous man, ended a couple of years ago, but they continue to see each other as friends – linked by a strong sense of family. Pete’s fear of intimacy, combined with the long shadow of AIDS, has kept him cautious, frustrated, and alone.
When Pete’s mother, the lively and strong-willed matriarch of a well-to-do Philadelphia clan, is diagnosed with cancer, her illness becomes the catalyst for Pete and his siblings to face their own demons. Bea and Mary Alice – two sisters as different as beer and champagne – struggle to understand how a woman as sophisticated and unrelenting as their mother would neglect her own health. Stu, Pete’s successful stockbroker brother with an insensitive wife and a secret that could put him behind bars, chooses withdrawal. Phil – successful businessman, aloof father, and loving husband – is neither certain of his own future nor confident in his role in this adult family. And Pete, desperate to transcend his isolation but afraid to take the risk, becomes the focus of his mother’s mission to close the gaps in the family, while there’s still time.