Forty-one-year-old Abra, the narrator of
Third Class Relics
, gathers with her brother and cousins for an uncomfortable dinner the night after her father’s wake. No one speaks of the one missing family member—Jeffrey, the youngest cousin—nor of his doppelganger, Rupert, whose name Abra’s father cried out just before his death. When the evening comes to a close, Abra finds herself prowling her family’s history against her will. As she journeys through their darkest chapters, she is forced to confront the complex role Jeffrey/Rupert played in both healing and destroying them all, as well as the significance of her relationship with her cousin Andrei, who has spent twenty years blaming himself for the family’s defining tragedy.
recalls many Biblical myths, stories in which one person must perish so that those around him might be awakened to their inner darkness but also to their capacity for redemption.