A rich man with only six months to live takes a solitary holiday in Venice, a town he always liked. The novel follows Thomas Mistler, a New York advertising executive with cancer, in his attempt to seize the day, first with a young photographer, then with an unrequited love of his youth.

"After four decades of what he believes to be a happy, healthy partnership, Hugo Gardner's world is overturned when he learns that his wife, Valerie, is not only requesting a divorce but has left him for a younger, more vital man. Hugo, an octogenarian political writer and retired journalist for Time, must rethink the way he's lived, and reassess how he'd like to spend his remaining years. Reconsidering past relationships in his mind, with years of...