Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading. He’s a magician able to enchant 14-year-olds into a love of writing and literature. Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower. Over the course of three decades, Clara is a kindergarten thief, a high school genius, a Silicon Valley celebrity, and an animal rights activist turned terrorist. To tell Clara’s story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan, along with the rivalry and friendship with his Head of School, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows.

New York City is still regaining its balance in the years following 9/11, when four twenty-somethings --- Tess, Tazio, David and Angelica --- meet in a bar, each yearning for something: connection, recognition, a place in the world, a cause to believe in. Nearly 15 years later, as their city recalibrates in the wake of the 2016 election, their bond has endured --- but almost everything else has changed. With tensions rising on the national stage, the four friends are forced to face the reality of their shared histories, especially a long-ago betrayal that has shaped every aspect of their friendship.

Aaron, a disgraced rabbi turned Wall Street banker, and Amelia, his journalist girlfriend, live with their newborn in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The infusion of upwardly mobile professionals into Bed-Stuy’s historic brownstones belies the tension simmering on the streets below. But after a cop shoots a boy in a nearby park, conflict escalates to rioting. Pulled into the riot’s vortex are Antoinette, devout nanny to Aaron and Amelia’s son; Jupiter, the single father who lives on their block with his son, Derek; Daniel, Aaron’s unhinged tenant in their basement unit; and Sara, a smart local girl, broiling with confusion and rage. As the day unfolds, these diverse characters are forced to reckon with who they are and what truly matters to them.