The News from the End of the World

When forty-two-year-old Vance Lake arrives at his twin brother’s Cape Cod home, he’s not in a good place. He’s just been fired for scandalous reasons from his adjunct teaching position, and his girlfriend has left him. He has nowhere to go, and Craig’s house is the obvious place to land. But Vance immediately discovers that Craig and his family are in the middle of a crisis. Craig is heavily in debt, his business struggling. His wife, Gina, is hovering at the edges of an affair. Most distressingly, Craig’s daughter Amanda has been sent home from her wilderness adventure in Chile–and no one feels compelled to immediately tell Vance why. Once he learns the truth, the worst regrets of his life hurtle to the surface, and how he moves forward will change him forever.

Compressed into a four-day period, End of the World is an agreeable family drama that revels in exploring those moments when a choice in either direction will set life spinning in vastly different ways. The chilly landscape of off-season Cape Cod underscores the harsh truths the entire Lake family must reckon with. Ultimately, longstanding locals like the Lakes can’t outrun their mistakes–or their heartaches.