A Reunion of Ghosts

Mitchell, Judith Claire

ISBN 10: 1481534238 ISBN 13: 9781481534239

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2015

Synopsis

[Read by Kirsten Potter and William Charlton]

A compulsively readable literary masterpiece, A Reunion of Ghosts is the shared confessional of three sisters who have decided to kill themselves at the end of the twentieth century, honoring the dark legacy that has haunted their extraordinary family for decades.

How do three sisters write a single suicide note?

In the waning days of 1999, the Alter sisters - Lady, Vee, and Delph - finalize their plans to end their lives. Their reasons are not theirs alone; they are the last in a long line of Alters who have killed themselves, beginning with their great-grandmother, the wife of a Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who developed the first poison gas used in World War I and the lethal agent used in Third Reich gas chambers. The chemist himself, their son Richard, and Richard's children all followed suit.

The childless sisters also define themselves by their own bad luck. Lady, the oldest, never really resumed living after her divorce. Vee is facing cancer's return. And Delph, the youngest, is resigned to a spinster's life of stifled dreams. But despite their pain they love each other fiercely, and share a darkly brilliant sense of humor.

As they gather in the ancestral Upper West Side apartment to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic story about four generations of one family -- inspired in part by the troubled life of German-Jewish Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of chlorine gas -- unfolds. A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the twentieth century.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST

“The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.”—Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia

In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters—three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself.

“Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”—People Book of the Week

“A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author

 

About the Author:

Judith Claire Mitchell, author of the novel The Last Day of the War, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Judy has received fellowships from the James A. Michener/Copernicus Society, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1481534238
• ISBN 13: 9781481534239
• Binding: Audio CD