New York. Now. A cir­cle of tol­er­ant, lib­er­al peo­ple, promi­nent in their pro­fes­sions, with a wide, diverse cir­cle of friends. Wes­ley Bow­man, 16, moves from his moth­er and stepfather’s home to that of his father and his part­ner for the fall term, hop­ing to get to know his gay-rights lawyer dad bet­ter. But Wes­ley has more luck con­nect­ing with his father’s part­ner George, a for­mer actor who now runs a restau­rant. When Wesley’s friend comes out in a school assem­bly, the boys find them­selves at the cen­ter of an act of vio­lence. Tol­er­ant facades crum­ble as George, sud­den­ly, becomes sus­pect; Wesley’s moth­er Lola val­ues and cares for him, but doesn’t she have to wor­ry, as a moth­er, what might have been going on when her back was turned? Who is Wes­ley, real­ly? Did she let him go out into the world too ear­ly, and eas­i­ly? These Things Hap­pen is about the assump­tions we hold with­out even know­ing it, the received con­vic­tions just below the sur­face that need only the right cat­alyt­ic event to break out. By the end of the book, all rela­tion­ships change, as every­one faces the fact that they didn’t know each oth­er or them­selves at all.