The Fourth Standard Deviation

This character-driven story begins with an unwanted birth in 1948. It moves back one year to the turmoil of post-war Nazi Germany and then across the ocean to the structured civility of an insulated, hyperwealthy Chicago suburb. Three Americans and one German meet and forge a series of reckless bonds – emotional, sexual, religious, and the most dangerous, psychological – leading each of them down parallel paths of unwanted self-discovery.

The raw intensity of the four major characters and the far-reaching consequences of the ties they build to ensnare one another create a story about the ambiguity, yet liberating potential, of individual choice in the midst of personal suffering and loss.

The action is intense and concentrated as these four confront and then welcome false identity, mass murder, father-son incest, profound emotional betrayals, mutual psychological enslavement, infidelity and, for one, the glimmer of a subtle but extraordinary redemption.