How does a man get past his past? AS A DECADE FADES is a story about a troubled man with a troubled past. As he approaches thirty, Jody Grafton's career as a singer-songwriter falls apart: he loses his record deal, his money, his fameeven his desire to create new music. While he stares at the rubble of his one-hit-wonder musical career, his mother is diagnosed with stage-III lung cancer, and Jody watches helplessly as his mother dies a slow, painful death. Less than a month later, his eight-year marriage ends abruptly. Amid the tailspin, Jody receives a phone call from his recently estranged girlfrienda miserable woman he no longer lovesand she has unexpected news: she's pregnant. AS A DECADE FADES begins with this phone call. As he exits his twenties, Jody Grafton grapples with loneliness, depression, lust, and infatuation, while glancing at the mounting wreckage in his rearview. When he can't fitor forcethe pieces of his life back together, he leaves his native Ohio to search for answers in the most unlikely of places: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.