It is the Great Depression. Abandoned by his beautiful wife, Henry and his two young children, Thomas and Margaret, spend that summer in a tent on the edge of Black Pond. Henry, an itinerant butcher, struggles to provide for his children but often must leave them alone as he travels the county in search of work. And while Henry loves his children deeply, he is devastated by their mother’s desertion, refusing to tell them why she left or if she’ll return. When Mrs. Phyllis Farley, a prosperous neighbor, begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son,
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Max Wolinsky comes from a family of mostly upstanding salesmen. On the eve of his son’s bar mitzvah, he returns home to Philadelphia, where he plans to put the finishing touches on a not-so-honorable business transaction and then disappear quietly back to Florida. Nothing, however, goes as planned. Coming home, it seems, means coming to terms with his family. It means facing the expectations of his father, the needs of his stroke-addled uncle, and the adolescent tribulations of his son. Honest, funny, and moving, Responsible Men is a portrait of three generations of men struggling to be good sons and good fathers in a world of big dreams and bigger temptations.
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When an elderly and newly widowed Ukrainian immigrant declares his intention to remarry, his intended turns out to be a voluptuous gold digger from the old country with a proclivity for green satin underwear and an insatiable appetite for the good life of the West. And so his children Vera and Nadezhda must set aside years of bitter rivalry to rescue their annoyingly frisky father who (when he is not pursuing Valentina) is busily writing a grand history of the tractor and its role in human progress. As the intrigues multiply and secrets spill out, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian takes in love and suffering,
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This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down’s syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives,
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Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at Fayer Academy fifteen years ago. She has since become one of the best teachers the school has ever had. But Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the outside world and from an inside secret. When she accepts an impulsive marriage proposal, the prescribed life Vida has constructed is swiftly dismantled. The English Teacher is a passionate tale of a mother and son’s vital bond and a provocative look at our notions of intimacy, honesty, loyalty and the real meaning of home. A triumphant and masterful follow-up to her acclaimed,
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From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
A spare, lucid, and remarkably moving examination of the year following her husband’s sudden death just before their fortieth anniversary, The Year of Magical Thinking is the story of Didion’s search for answers, for relief, and above all for the chance to change the course of events.
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