It is 1934. And Dr. James Delaney deals with the icy grip of the Great Depression in the only way he can. With enormous compassion, he tends to his hurt, sick, and poor neighbors whether they can pay him or not. His patients include New York City's gangsters and Tammany chieftains, veterans and day laborers, prostitutes and housewives. As a doctor, he learns the most difficult secrets about people's lives - secrets he has long since learned to keep to himself.But in his own life, Delaney inhabits the country of numbness. He is haunted by the slaughters of the recent World War. His only daughter has left abruptly to pursue revolutionary dreams. And his wife, Molly, vanished many months before, leaving him to wonder if she is alive or dead. Living alone in Greenwich Village, hard by the Hudson, which New Yorkers still call the North River, Delaney submerges his own pain by alleviating the pain of his patients.Then, on a snowy New Year's Day, the doctor returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney's care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as Rose and the boy care for him, the numbness in Delaney starts to melt.Even as these two lives begin changing his, one of the secrets Delaney has pledged to guard threatens to cast him into the dangerous world of long-held vendettas and unfettered violence. Delaney's loyalty to a friend may cost him - and those newly dear to him - their lives. Read Less