Tracy, My Destiny — Michael D. Lieberman

Dan is twenty-six, has a masters degree in international affairs, waits tables to pay the bills, lives with Marnie, but still pines for Julie, who mocks him from behind a huge desk at the law firm where she is a highly-paid summer associate. Tracy is thirty-one, works a dull research job for two guys named John, her mother a hopeless alcoholic, her longtime boyfriend John is also a hopeless workaholic; Tracy wants more from life, but she doesn't know where to turn. When Tracy invites a Yugoslavian political refugee for dinner, Dan serves them a triple-meat pizza and everything changes. Washington, DC, 1990.

Set in the nation's capital and suburban New Jersey in the 1990s, Tracy, My Destiny is a love story. But just who loves whom, how, and where is never clear. Tracy and Dan waste time searching for places they do not know exist, emerging from the ruin of stillborn careers, premature fatalities, irredeemable relationships, sexual harassment, and a mysterious arson in parallel states of confusion.

Tracy, My Destiny exposes the powerful emotions that run beneath the surface of modern American life and explores the complex instability and emotional lives of two ordinary, struggling people. This is Michael D. Lieberman's most intimate and poignant fiction, a sometimes bittersweet, and occasionally tragic portrait of the journey into adulthood in late twentieth century America.