Heller introduces us to the Litvinoff family at a crisis point. Joel, the head of the family suffers a stroke at the start of an important trial in a New York courtroom. His wife Audrey calls her son and two daughters to his bedside. In between battling with the Doctors over her husband’s medical care and wrestling with her conscience over keeping him alive Audrey learns that Joel had a mistress – she was tolerant of his many affairs – but this mistress had a son which Joel has secretly been supporting and the family has its own troubles.
Lenny the recovering drug addict may have fallen off the wagon again. Barren Karla, dieting social worker whose husband Mike is so desperate to foist an adoption on her that’s he pushing her towards another man. And finally Rosa, whose radical atheist upbringing means that her work with disadvantaged African American kids should be ideal. But instead she feels a pull towards her Jewish roots and beings to explore her denied faith.
A complex study of nature over nurture in post 9/11 New York.
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