Excerpt from Villa America by Liza Klaussmann, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He wanted to lean into Father's side, to feel the gray, lightweight wool of his suit. Father always wore the same kind of suit, but Gerald could never remember actually touching it. He thought he might risk it, it was so cold. He inched slightly closer, but Father moved away at the same time, his arm extended, his finger pointing at something.

"Gerald," Father said. "Do you see that big building there? If you walk up six blocks, that is where I work."

The Mark Cross Company, Father's company. They made leather goods and saddlery, Gerald knew, for the discerning gentleman. "What is that big building?"

Father looked at him, annoyed at the question. "That is the American Surety Building."

"Why is it so much bigger than the others?" Gerald asked, chancing it.

"It just is," Father said.

"How did they get it to go so high?" He knew he was on thin ice. "It's called a skyscraper. They could build it so high because they wanted to."

Gerald looked at his father. He was staring out at the big building. Gerald could tell he was thinking. He saw that expression sometimes when he was brought into Father's study to say good night and his father would be reading, his hand resting on top of his smooth head.

"That is something you must learn, Gerald," his father said now. "You and your brother. To decide to do something and then follow it through to its end. That's how they built that. That's how anything worth doing gets done." Father tapped his cane against the railing and then turned and walked back inside. Gerald followed, still wondering how they had built that big building and who had climbed that high into the sky without falling.

After the boat, there'd been a long train ride, during which Father read the quotations of a man called Ralph Waldo Emerson to him at great length (Gerald knew this was the man whose bust sat in Father's study giving him the beady eye every time he snuck in when he wasn't supposed to), and then they'd arrived in Atlantic City.

Gerald had been to the seaside before, but never one that looked like this, with its enormous hotels and busy wooden sidewalk right next to the sand, and piers standing high like clowns on stilts, stretching for miles out into the water. Also, there were shops selling all sorts of things Gerald couldn't make out, and couples whizzing by in rolling chairs made for two. There was a huge ice water fountain at the entrance of Young's Pier. Gerald got a pickle pin from the Heinz Pier, which had just had what Father called a "grand opening."

He stayed very close to Father on the boardwalk, but then Father pointed to a large building with a giant flag on top and told him that was their hotel. It was the United States Hotel, which sounded very impressive to Gerald.

In the evening, Father said he was going to the theater to see a famous French actress in a play. Gerald didn't want to be left alone in the room by himself, but Father never liked fuss, so Gerald didn't say anything when his father left the room in his evening clothes, extinguishing the light as he went.

Gerald lay in his bed in the darkness and thought about another game, one he was teaching Pitz to play. Gerald would line up his toy soldiers, the ones he'd gotten in his stocking for Christmas, and the dog would knock them over with his nose, one by one. Gerald shut his eyes and tried to picture his friend. Then he rolled his pillow up next to him and put his arm around it, pretending it was Pitz, and went to sleep.

The following morning when Gerald woke, he heard laughter coming from the sitting room that separated his bedroom from Father's. He opened the door and wandered out. In the fresh light, he saw a dark-haired lady in a mauve dress lying over Father's knee, laughing. She immediately went quiet when she saw Gerald, but Father's expression never changed. For a moment he wondered if Father was Father; he didn't look like himself. He looked lighter somehow, nicer.

Excerpted from Villa America by Liza Klaussmann. Copyright © 2015 by Liza Klaussmann. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.