Alligators May Be Present: A Novel (Library of American Fiction)

While many Jews have picked Florida as the perfect place to retire, Matt Glassman has chosen it as the place to begin his adulthood. Perhaps that's because the pressures of life have always reminded him about his grandfather who mysteriously disappeared from the family twenty years ago. Now, while he tries to begin a family of his own, he also builds a relationship with the one person who might know the truth about his grandfather?s disappearance: his grandmother. She's remained stubbornly reticent on the topic all these years, but when a familiar old man shows up at Glassman's office he thinks he may finally get some answers. Alligators May Be Present......Page 4 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Does Everything Have to Mean Something?......Page 14 Here I Am......Page 17 Hello, I’m Irving Shuman......Page 27 While You Were Out......Page 45 Alligators May Be Present......Page 65 A Change in Altitude......Page 85 Meet the Wood Stork......Page 111 Someday You’ll Talk about Me Like This......Page 132 Think of How Lucky We Are......Page 163 We’ve Come All This Way......Page 174 Are You Talking to Everybody, or Just to a Few People?......Page 192 I Heard the Heartbeat......Page 206 The Defender of Weak and Victimized Pooches......Page 211 Stop Calling Me Shuman, Son......Page 237 Did You Think I Wouldn’t Know You . . .......Page 242 This Your Mother Knows Nothing Of......Page 250 A Vision of Feathers......Page 266 Matt Glassman builds a relationship with the one person, his grandmother, who might know the truth about his grandfather's disappearance. She's remained stubbornly reticent on the topic all these years, but when a familiar old man shows up at Glassman's office he thinks he may finally get some answers.