Terry Walker is an even-tempered mathematics professor, comfortable with the order and predictability of his quiet Salt Lake City subdivision. At his children's births, he masks his anxiety with numbers -- his wife's contractions and dilations, blood pressure, heart rate. At funerals, he calculates the cubic feet of earth the coffin displaces.But control is illusive, as his fifteen-year-old son, Blake, teaches him. Sensitive, Blake from a young age refuses to eat meat. Fearing he might hurt his friends' feelings, he withdraws from a spelling bee he can easily win. More importantly, Blake harbors a secret from Terry.Driving this novel are issues that Thomas Mann would have found compelling. Terry Walker's inability to accept what he knows and does not know, what he possibly could never accept, exacts a high price. At the threshold of insanity, he wages war against chaos, while Van Wagoner takes us beneath the story's skin.