Chapter One

If God had found a reason to take a snapshot of Paradise, it would have shown Main Street to be the trunk of an evergreen, roads sprouting like boughs so ragged and droopy the whole thing resembled a Christmas tree left by the curb. Once, fifty resorts had decorated the branches of Paradise. Now, the remains clung to the roads like cracked, fading baubles. That December afternoon in 1978, as I drove with my mother to our family's hotel, I counted nine victims of Jewish lightning, the freakish force that strikes only vacant resorts with no chance for profit except from insurance. ("Hey Solly, I was upset to hear about your fire." "Shh!" whispers Sol, "it's not until tomorrow.") Patches of snow drifted over charred beams; the chimneys had fallen and lay in jutted curves like black spinal columns.

    Most of the resorts had simply been abandoned. The main houses stood, but the stucco had peeled from beneath the windows and these looked out beyond the gates like haunted eyes. Handball backboards poked up from overgrown fields, warped plywood tombstones inscribed in flaking paint with the names of the dead.

    As we drove past the backboard for Fein's Hillside Manor, I thought of my fight in first grade with Jeff Fein.

    "The Eden's a shit house," Jeff hissed across our table in art class. "The pool's cracked. The food stinks!"

    In my rage, I hammered Jeff again and again in his pudding-soft stomach until he recanted. Now, it seemed my blows had battered not Jeff, but his parents' hotel. Contrite, I admitted that Fein's Hillside indeed had been superior to the Eden