A wise and richly symphonic first novel, Long for This World is a thoroughly contemporary family drama that hinges on a riveting medical dilemma. Dr. Henry Moss is a dedicated geneticist who stumbles upon a possible cure for a disease that causes rapid aging and early death in children. Although his discovery may hold the key to eternal youth, exploiting it is an ethical minefield. Henry must make a painful choice: he can save the life of a critically ill boy he has grown to love — at the cost of his career — or he can sell his findings for a fortune to match the wealth of his dot-com-rich Seattle neighbors. Henry turns to his family for support, and in their intimately detailed lives unfolds a story of unforgettable characters grappling with their own demons. "A wise story of ethics and family affection...No one is overdrawn, everyone is as real and worth knowing as he or she can be...Deep and real." Kirkus Reviews, Starred "Compassionate, richly detailed...[the] characterizations are so vivid and convincing that they are nearly hyper-real..." Publishers Weekly, Starred "Hooray for [Michael Byers'] grand scope and compassionate voice." --Karen Valby Entertainment Weekly "[Byers] displays a virtousity with figurative language that puts him in a class with such new American masters as Charles Baxter and Antonya Nelson." --Thomas Mallon Atlantic Monthly "'Long for This World' . . . is a piercing scientific and familial romance. . . Byers effortlessly conveys the quick pivots and non sequiturs of familial byplay." --Kerry Fried The New York Times Book Review A first novel wise beyond its author's years. The Chicago Tribune Michael Byers’s story collection The Coast of Good Intentions won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Long for This World was featured on the History Channel's “Mavericks, Miracles, and Medicine.” The recipient of a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award, Byers lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two children. Long for This World By Michael Byers Mariner Books Copyright © 2004 Michael Byers All right reserved. ISBN: 0618446486 Excerpt 1 It was a big old pleasant high school gym, built in the twenties and not much disturbed by renovation. The iron rafters met at a shallow angle at the roofline, and the tall windows were made up of a dozen big panes, each reinforced with chicken wire, and the two ancient clocks sat on opposing brick walls, ratcheting their works forward with an audible whir, hiss, clunk. The gym smelled nostalgically of varnish, sweat, and paint, but it was not an obsolete or shabby place. An electronic scoreboard reading garfield — visitors — quarter — fouls — time out had been added on the east wall, and a recent grant from FareWatchers.com had supplied the courtside officials with a new Huston-Marke computerized scoring system, a sleek blue box that sat beneath the long scorers" table and extended its heavy gray cables to an outlet hidden under the bleachers. The purple Garfield bulldog, wearing its studded collar, snarled up from the court"s center circle, and the backboards were regulation glass, and the nets were in good repair, and when the boys played here a riotous, explosive sort of crowd would gather, and the breakaway rims actually got some use, and once in a while — once a decade or so — someone would appear who was so obviously superior to the rest of the boys that his future would be discussed with the frank and half-informed calculation any phenomenon inspires. The boys" team often played in the state tournament and had won it six years ago, and its purple banners hung from the rafters, drifting sideways when the big purple entry doors were left open to the hall. But tonight the girls were playing, and very few people were there. From his seat midway up the home bleachers Henry Moss could see almost everyone who had come out of the rain to watch — a hundred or so people, including his wife, Ilse, and son, Darren, who sat directly in front of him, a row below, so he was looking down into their hair; and Sandra, his daughter, who was on the court, holding the ball with her back to the hoop, wearing the stern and thoughtful expression of someone taking apart a complicated bomb. The girls" team was not nearly as good as the boys" — in fact, they lost almost every game they played — but Sandra herself was very good, the starting center, and despite the team"s terrible record she carried herself up and down between the baskets with a kind of preoccupied confidence that plucked at Henry"s heart and made him lean down now and then to grasp his wife"s shoulders. She would pat his hands and hold them for a second before letting go. It was not an uncommon gesture there; the team was so bad — so unwatchably bad at times, really — that nearly everyone in the gym was related in some way to one of the players. So