The two sharply-rendered short novels of New York / Siena rush with wit and verve to provide two period takes on American ways of "growing up." In The Man Who Owned New York, fledgling cleric "Dick Rover" Stackpole commits a gaudy crime to secure a farmer's claim to his parish's property. Springtime in Siena follows a young academic leading a semester-abroad student group to Tuscany in 1974 who coldly modifies his own voracious behavior.