Bruce Mason, first seen as a youth embittered by the events of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, returns to Salt Lake City forty-five years later for the funeral of an aunt. As Bruce makes the perfunctory arrangements for the funeral, we enter with him on an intensely private and painful inner pilgrimage populated by the ghosts of his past. Recollections of them become a source of revelation for Bruce Mason. He makes peace with his dead father and finally comes around to what he is: a respected professional diplomat and a man with a past worth inheriting.

Recapitulation is a moving novel about self-knowledge dearly bought and ultimate survival by one of America's most distinguished novelists.

"In an age of explicit sex scenes and of male-female hates and struggles, it is wonderful to open this book. . . . Despite the flapper fashions and references to prohibition and old Fords, one comes out aware of universal, human feelings that have nothing to do with time—present, future, or past."—Christian Science Monitor

"Recapitulation is rich in the grittier American truths. . . . It has a piece of our pathos at its core."—Benjamin DeMott, New York Times Book Review