Bruce Mason, first seen as a youth embittered by the events of The Big Rock Candy Mountain, returns to Salt Lake City forty-five years later for the funeral of an aunt. As Bruce makes the perfunctory arrangements for the funeral, we enter with him on an intensely private and painful inner pilgrimage populated by the ghosts of his past. Recollections of them become a source of revelation for Bruce Mason. He makes peace with his dead father and finally comes around to what he is: a respected professional diplomat and a man with a past worth inheriting.

Recapitulation is a moving novel about self-knowledge dearly bought and ultimate survival by one of America's most distinguished novelists.