About the Author:
BILL BRODER has published nine books of fiction: The Sacred Hoop, Sierra Club Books; Remember This Time, written with his wife, Gloria Kurian Broder, Newmarket Press; Taking Care of Cleo, Handsel Books/ Other Press; and the following books by The Ainslie Street Project: The Thanksgiving Trilogy, including Crimes of Innocence, Esau’s Mountain, and What Rough Beast?; Two Russian Bicycles, consisting of two novellas, Tolstoy’s Wife and The Sphinx of Kiev; Belief, A Novel; and The Teeth of God. He has published one book of nonfiction: A Prayer for the Departed, The Ainslie Street Project. Broder has also acted as member, executive director, and artistic director of a playwrights’ workshop, California On Stage, and has completed a number of full-length plays, which have received staged readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of his plays were presented as staged readings at The Second and Third Annual California Studies Conference in Sacramento, California. His play Abalone! was produced in Carmel, California. Throughout his free-lance writing career, he has worked with publishers and exhibit designers to create materials for educational institutions.
From Publishers Weekly:
Jewish identity, autism and bootlegging form the unlikely framework for this coming-of-age story set in a lakeside Michigan resort town during Prohibition. Rebecca Bearwald longs to escape the confines of smalltown life in Charlevoix, where her family are the only Jews, but her parents expect her to stay at home to help them run their small dry goods store and take care of Cleo, Rebecca's beautiful, autistic older sister. But the summer that Rebecca turns 18, she defies her parents, secretly applying for a scholarship at the University of Michigan. Meanwhile, Cleo, an apprentice boatwright, discovers and restores a damaged yacht filled with liquor, beached by a violent storm and a gunfight between rival gangs of bootleggers. Cleo hides the liquor, planning to sell it to local speakeasies to help Rebecca get money for university, actions that give the Purple Gang—actual Detroit Jewish bootleggers—the idea that Mr. Bearwald has elbowed in on the gangsters' territory. The dangers that ensue seem to awaken the passions of each Bearwald but never feel truly threatening. While the novel (after Remember This Time) offers a sensitive portrayal of adolescent angst and strives to dispel negative stereotypes about autism, its farfetched plot makes its thematic resolutions feel forced. (Apr. 18) Look for more reviews, exclusively on the Web, at www.publishersweekly.com, Review Annex.
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