There must be some mistake

Wallace Webster lives alone in Kemah, Texas, at Forgetful Bay, a condo development where residents are passing away at an alarming rate. As he monitors events in the neighborhood, Wallace keeps in touch with his ex-wife, his grown daughter, a former coworker for whom he has much-averted eyes, and a somewhat exotic resident with whom he commences an offbeat affair that begins with his being locked in an Airstream trailer attached to the roof of her restaurant. He sifts through the curious accidents that plague his neighbors, all the while reflecting on his past and shortening future. Required to ponder his own mortality, he wonders if "settling for" something less than he aspired to is a kind of cowardice, or just good sense.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.