This heartbreaking memoir of a friendship accomplishes so many things, it’s difficult to sum up. It’s an extraordinary and sensitive portrait of a lifelong friendship of these two men whose lives took drastically different turns and a critique of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, while at the same time an interrogation of what the options might be for someone brilliant but untethered to reality. The books evokes his and his friend Michael Lawter’s coming of age in the 1970s, amid the dark currents that the 1960s left behind for so many young people. Michael struggled to find a community where he felt safe and nurtured enough to wrestle his demons, and when he thought he had found such a place, he was still often on his own. Rosen thinks aloud about what his and society’s responsibilities are to people with schizophrenia, and how much latitude can be helpfully given to those suffering with the condition, without impinging on the freedoms of others. An important book and one rich with provocative insights and questions.