Eli­jah Mendes was hop­ing for a more tri­umphant return to Chica­go. His moth­er, Eve, is dying of can­cer, his busi­ness flamed out, and he has nowhere else to go. So, he returns to Chica­go feel­ing list­less and shat­tered, wor­ried about how he will help his moth­er despite their chilly rela­tion­ship. He finds some inspi­ra­tion when he dis­cov­ers that their fam­i­ly owns a Jew­ish ceme­tery and that a man he’s nev­er heard of, his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan, is buried in a plot there. With a new sense of pur­pose — and an excuse to talk more deeply with his moth­er — Eli­jah begins pur­su­ing a fam­i­ly mys­tery of extra­or­di­nary pro­por­tions.

Eli­jah dis­cov­ers his grand­fa­ther Yitz, Eve’s father, was a pow­er­ful gang­ster in the 1920s. She was ashamed and nev­er spoke about him to Eli­jah. As secrets unrav­el, the past and present become inter­twined, and Yitz’s sto­ry forces Eli­jah and Eve to bond in ways they nev­er have before and begin to accept each oth­er, not as who they wish they were but as they both are.

Kaplan’s Plot is an aston­ish­ing bal­anc­ing act between the ruth­less and the ten­der, the super­fi­cial and the truth, by a writer with tremen­dous promise.