lightofhome_cover Published by Atheneum in 1992, The Light of Home contains 17 intimate, intricately structured stories about real people living real lives and the joys, dreams, longings and losses that define them. Frank Conroy called these stories “Elegant pieces, mostly pianissimo, from a new writer to be watched.”

In A Circular Shore, a man is left to raise his small daughter by himself when his wife leaves him for the city.

In Birdland, a man traveling on business spends the day with his wife’s old roommate and finds himself obscurely attracted to her.

In This Strange Shape, ex-lovers discover that they remember their affair very differently.

In Willie, the narrator is both empowered and paralyzed by the intensity of his own self-awareness: “There was so much I had to reject, so much that was lacking, such a saturating impermanence about my person and my past that to commit myself to anything had always implied a profound self-betrayal.”
Booklist: “Binstock notes the many small gestures and shifting emotions of characters in direct, precise language…. there are intimate glimpses of men and women, often shrouded in anxiety, fear, joy, desire, or some combination thereof. This debut collection expresses the particular tenor of our time in a myriad of contemporary situations.”