Rare Stuff, a literary novel set in the mid-1990s, tells the story of Sidney Zimmerman, a slightly lost photographer working on an infinite series of portraits. After the sudden death of Sid’s father Aaron, Sid and her boyfriend André trace a series of wacky clues Aaron irritatingly left to lead them to the solution of the mysterious disappearance of Sid’s mother, a whale enthusiast named Dorothy, eighteen years earlier. Aaron also bequeathed them a manuscript sporting his wild ideas that his wife had been adopted by Yiddish speaking whales who try to save the planet.