Excerpt from Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Some Friday nights were just too late, and some Wednesday mornings were just too early. After a difficult conversation there would be no kiss between the legs, and if one isn't feeling generous, how many things really qualify as being larger on the inside than on the outside? (You can't put resentment on a shelf.) They held on to what they could, and tried not to acknowledge how secular they had become. But every now and then, usually in a moment of defensiveness that, despite the pleas of every better angel, simply could not resist taking the form of blame, one of them would say, "I miss our Shabbats."

Sam's birth felt like another chance, as did Max's and Benjy's. A religion for three, for four, for five. They ritualistically marked the children's heights on the doorframe on the first day of every year—secular and Jewish—always first thing in the morning, before gravity did its work of compression. They threw resolutions into the fire every December 31, took Argus on a family walk every Tuesday after dinner, and read report cards aloud on the way to Vace for otherwise forbidden aranciatas and limonatas. Tuck-in happened in a certain order, according to certain elaborate protocols, and on anyone's birthday everyone slept in the same bed. They often observed Shabbat—as much in the sense of self-consciously witnessing religion as fulfilling it—with a Whole Foods challah, Kedem grape juice, and the tapered wax of endangered bees in the silver candleholders of extinct ancestors. After the blessings, and before eating, Jacob and Julia would go to each of the children, hold his head, and whisper into his ear something of which they were proud that week. The extreme intimacy of the fingers in the hair, the love that wasn't secret but had to be whispered, sent tremors through the filaments of the dimmed bulbs.

After dinner, they performed a ritual whose origin no one could remember and whose meaning no one questioned: they closed their eyes and walked around their house. It was fine to speak, to be silly, to laugh, but their blindness always became silent. Over time, they developed a tolerance for the dark quiet and could last for ten minutes, then twenty. They would meet back at the kitchen table, and then open their eyes together. Each time it was revelatory. Two revelations: the foreignness of a home the children had lived in their entire lives, and the foreignness of sight.

One Shabbat, as they drove to visit their great-grandfather Isaac, Jacob said, "A person gets drunk at a party, and hits and kills a kid on the way home. Another person gets equally drunk, and makes it home safely. Why does the first one go to jail for the rest of his life, while the second gets to wake up the next morning as if nothing happened?"

"Because he killed a kid."

"But in terms of what they did wrong, they are equally guilty."

"But the second one didn't kill a kid."

"Not because he was innocent, but because he was lucky."

"But still, the first one killed a kid."

"But when we think about guilt, shouldn't we think about actions and intentions, in addition to outcomes?"

"What kind of party was it?"

"What?"

"Yeah, and what was the kid doing out that late, anyway?"

"I think the point—"

"His parents should have kept him safe. They should be sent to jail. But I guess then the kid wouldn't have parents. Unless he lived in jail with them."

"You're forgetting he's dead."

"Oh, right."

Sam and Max became enthralled by intention. Once, Max ran into the kitchen crying, holding his stomach. "I punched him," Sam said from the living room, "but not on purpose." Or when, in retaliation, Max stomped on Sam's half-finished Lego chalet and said, "It wasn't on purpose; I only meant to stomp on the rug beneath it." Broccoli was fed to Argus under the table, "by accident." Quizzes weren't studied for, "on purpose." The first time Max told Jacob "Shut up"—in response to a poorly timed suggestion that he take a break from some Tetris derivative on which he was about to crack the top ten scores of the day but wasn't supposed to be playing in the first place—he put down Jacob's phone, ran to him, hugged him, and with fear-glazed eyes, said, "I didn't mean it."

Excerpted from Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer. Copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Safran Foer. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.