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Summary

This summary is for the purpose of helping me remember the story; spoiler alert. Seth and Able tell their stories in alternating chapters. Able has a humpback deformity and his twin, Paul, was something of a golden boy. Able fell in love with his twin's wife, Mae, and slept with her, resulting in a daughter, Jaimie. He presumed the child to be his because Paul, it turned out, was gay. Paul's golden era ended when he fell prey to the family curse of early-onset Alzheimer's. Able was perpetually and eternally sad, but didn't inherit the Alzheimer's gene. Meanwhile, Seth's mother developed Alzheimer's, and Seth, at age 15, began a passionate but uneducated attempt at learning about others who had the same strain of the disease; everyone who had that particular strain must be all related. Seth's mother told him stories about a land called Isidora, where meanness and anxiety were absent. Isidorans didn't speak, but they felt love and peace for and from each other until an interloper from the outside world introduced sadness and anger. Seth's mother, in her Alzheimer's fog, sought to return to her childhood home, which was right near the entrance to Isidora. Seth and his father helped her get there, and discovered an old, old man (Able) in a tumble-down house. Able gave Seth the book of tales HIS mother had told him, and had written down, about Isidora. It turns out that Seth's mother is Jaimie, Able's daughter with Mae.