Again

Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve, says philosopher George Santayana. Exact recurrence of the same has a vanishingly small probability, but it seems likely that everyone has experience of nearly recurrent events, that is, events that make the past seem to be a part of the present. The novel "Again" features three intertwined stories of near-repetition involving four men and five women. The social context is the Greek-American immigrant community of my youth and the locale the northern plains of the Midwest where I have lived all my days.