In this novel the author draws on his interest in the Jewish Faith and also his experience in the field of advertising.
He introduces the reader to Bennie Traumann whose Jewish parents had escaped from persecution in Nazi Germany to find refuge in Chicago where his family had established a business manufacturing optical goods.
The parents were both disturbed as a result of their traumatic experience leading his mother to experience a post natal depression and his father to 'switch off'.
Bennie is brought up by a Jewish carer and eventually he enrols in a school of art and then as a graphic designer with an advertising agency.
The book continues, in Bennie's own words, to describe his growth into maturity shaped by Jewish Faith.