Family and Other Accidents
by Shari Goldhagen
Published by Doubleday
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By Kathy Perschmann, Chanhassen (MN) Libarian
This is the story of Jack and Connor Reed--and eventually their girlfriends, wives and children.
Jack is the older brother, who at age 25 returns home to care for Connor when their mother dies. Their father had died a few years before.
Jack meets Mona, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and they begin a long-term relationship. Connor goes off to college, then graduate school in Boston. Jack tries to communicate his love for Connor, and often fails. Connor tries to let Jack know how he feels, and often fails. Jack continues to support Connor financially through college, then graduate school.
Connor meets and falls in love with Laine and marries her when she becomes pregnant. Connor is trying to create the family he never had, and become the father he always wanted. Jack keeps working long hours as an attorney, avoiding commitment to Mona; needing her desperately only after she moves to Chicago.
While growing up Connor had contemplated a poster in Jack's room of a young JFK, and goes into non-profit work, while Laine transfers her advanced degree into a lucrative career in high finance. The two brothers, while living far apart, are able to support each other through illness, broken and severed relationships, pregnancies, and other "accidents."
Ultimately this disconnected family has done things right, as the two brothers struggle through their "fluid" relationship with each other and their wives, girlfriends and children, they do manage to communicate their love for the people in their lives.
Armchair Interview says: A story of "family" most of us can relate to.