Set in Washington, DC during the Obama years, THE CATCH is narrated by 24-year-old Ellie Adler, who is putting together a life with irregular patches of childhood memories, work relationships and family stories. Her beloved father, James, is a charismatic man who is a teacher, poet and lover. Among many other passions, he idolizes Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen. Ellie points out that she knew of no father-aged white man in America who was not obsessed with Springsteen.

Ellie introduces us to her father’s family at a Summer Thanksgiving in Maryland. James has four children from three marriages, and he bunches up the holidays in June, July or August so they all can be together. He loves each celebration. They are wonderfully grand events that are introduced by his traditional before-dinner speech, which includes a heartfelt but heckled imitation of Lou Gehrig’s “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” His third wife, Colette, is cheerfully roasting a turkey and setting the expanded table wearing a swimsuit in the hot kitchen. Ellie realizes that time is changing the relationships among the stepsiblings, but she is confident that she is still his favorite.

"THE CATCH is a great read that addresses a number of contemporary cultural issues... Alison Fairbrother writes brilliantly about how we come to understand ourselves and the people we love."

However, that confidence is destroyed when James suddenly and unexpectedly dies of a heart attack five days later. In his will, he leaves his daughter a small, unexceptional knick-knack. Ellie is devastated. She wanted very much to have the baseball that they had played with for so many years, but that was given to an unknown person, L. M. Taylor. None of James’ wives could identify this individual. Of course, Ellie wants to meet L. M. Taylor so she can understand why the ball was not given to her.

The premise of filling in unknown details of a parent’s life after his or her death is certainly a solid one for a good book. And Alison Fairbrother’s debut novel is indeed a good book. She creates intriguing missteps and unexpected detours for Ellie, who is now trying to make sense of her father’s life. As Ellie is introducing James in the early pages, she remembers seeing him in his high school yearbook, looking essentially as he would as an adult. She says it was unclear if he looked older then or younger now. He’d had only one way of looking, maybe one way of being, his entire life. The moment of learning about his life is both critical and revealing. Ellie is giving readers a first clue about James.

Ellie’s internal dialogue with herself rarely stops. She shows a growing responsibility in her relationships with her lover, her housemates and her mother. Her compassion deepens for her stepmothers and stepsiblings. She did not learn ASL when her stepbrother Van was born deaf 10 years ago, but she needs to care for him one afternoon, and she pieces together conversations with him. After a day rich with black and white cookies and a game of Monopoly, she discovers she loves him. The irony is that when she starts signing that to him, the room is dark. He won’t be able to see her.

When Colette invites Ellie to go with her to a shaman, she says yes. She is not making much headway when it comes to the baseball, so why not? They arrive at Potomac Elementary School, and the group of seven make a circle in kid-sized chairs. Their faces lift toward the pulsating fluorescent lights, and at last there is a signal from a spirit with a “J” name. Colette and the shaman piece together identifying facts and determine it is James. When Ellie asks where he is, the shaman points behind her to a wall covered with student assignments about the Atlantic Ocean. Up to this point Ellie has been skeptical, mocking even, embarrassing her stepmother and the others. But something has changed, and her desperation leads her to ask question after question, begging for reasons and answers. The shaman has quiet advice.

THE CATCH is a great read that addresses a number of contemporary cultural issues and includes rich details about families that shape and reshape. Best of all, though, it’s about a discovery that leads a young woman to grasp the reality of her own life, as well as her father’s. Alison Fairbrother writes brilliantly about how we come to understand ourselves and the people we love.