The Full Cat­a­stro­phe is the sto­ry of Char­lie Minkoff, a thir­teen-year-old boy born with inter­sex traits, and his grand­fa­ther, Oscar, a nine­ty-year-old Holo­caust sur­vivor and Charlie’s best friend and con­fi­dante. Because the Nazis dis­rupt­ed Oscar’s oppor­tu­ni­ty for a bar mitz­vah, Char­lie decides to right the his­tor­i­cal wrong and arrange for a joint bar mitz­vah for him­self and his zei­de. Liv­ing with his artist moth­er in a derelict loft in down­town Win­nipeg, per­pet­u­al­ly won­der­ing about the Ortho­dox Jew­ish father who aban­doned him, and tor­ment­ed in school because of his bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences, Char­lie nav­i­gates assort­ed cat­a­stro­phes thanks to his grandfather’s love and the makeshift fam­i­ly who sur­round him: his mother’s best friend Weeza, a cou­ple of elder­ly shut-in neigh­bors, a mys­te­ri­ous girl in his class who has dark secrets of her own, and his des­per­ate­ly needy and per­pet­u­al­ly flat­u­lent dog, Gell­man. The Full Cat­a­stro­phe is a nov­el of psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty, ten­der­ness, humor, and com­mu­ni­ty. It is about becom­ing men; a nov­el of secrets and the jour­neys these secrets propel.