The Heirs - Softcover

Hawthorne, Fran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 162288230X ISBN 13: 9781622882304

Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2018

Synopsis

THE HEIRS: A Novel
After breaking her hip in a serious accident, Eleanor Ritter's mother, Rose, a Holocaust survivor now living in New Jersey, suddenly starts talking about her harrowing childhood in Poland and the taboo subjects she has refused to discuss for half a century -- even speaking in long-forgotten Polish. Around the same time, Eleanor learns that the parents of her nine-year-old son's soccer teammate, Tadek, are Catholics from Poland.

As Eleanor becomes fixated with digging into the histories of both her mother and Tadek's family, her obsession strains her already difficult relationship with Rose, as well as her marriage to Nick, an IT technician who is himself caught up in preparing for the feared Y2K turn of the millennium.

Eleanor starts flirting heavily with the soccer coach, ignoring her twelve-year-old daughter's growing rebellion and her son's misery when he becomes the team pariah for badly messing up several games. Meanwhile, the "sure-fire" tech stock that Eleanor bought behind Nick's back is losing money. Even as her quest nourishes an odd friendship with Tadek's mother, it forces Eleanor to face the unavoidable questions:

How many generations does guilt carry on? What did your grandparents do to my grandparents?

About this title

About the Author

Fran Hawthorne has spent more than three decades writing award-winning nonfiction, including eight books, mainly about consumer activism and business social responsibility. (Please see her other titles on Amazon's Fran Hawthorne page.) But she's been privately writing novels since she was in junior high school, and THE HEIRS is her published debut.

Review

"In THE HEIRS, Fran Hawthorne skillfully weaves an intimate and compelling portrait of Eleanor Ritter, a woman whose growing obsession with her family's experiences during the Holocaust threatens to derail her life more than 50 years later. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, THE HEIRS vividly lays bare the injustice of a legacy of guilt, and the danger of holding the present accountable for our past." -- V.R. Barkowski, author of A Twist of Hate

"With grace, precision and infinite tenderness, Hawthorne limns the dilemma of the so-called sandwich generation, caught between rambunctious, rebellious children and declining parents. Here is a wise, thoughtful novel to savor and an author to watch--and love."--Yona Zeldis McDonough, fiction editor of Lilith magazine

"Whether it's her annoyingly perfect cousin, her Holocaust-survivor mother's newly broken hip, her pre-bat mitzvah daughter and un-athletic young son, or her non-Jewish husband whose work with computers keeps him constantly at the office -- all that pressure on Eleanor leads to things which have long stayed buried starting to ooze out. Many readers will relate to Eleanor's struggles and see in them their own." -- Debra Nussbaum Cohen, New York correspondent for Haaretz

"A compelling read."--Rosanne Korenberg, award-winning film producer and co-executive producer of I, Tonya.

"Hawthorne, who has written eight nonfiction books, presents a powerful meditation on identity, family history and the legacy of war."--Sandee Brawarsky,  The Jewish Week

About this edition

• Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 162288230X
• ISBN 13: 9781622882304
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 238