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Separated by a decade and 200 points on
their SAT scores, Jack and Connor Reed have a life in the
Cleveland suburbs held together by spit and Chinese takeout.
With his self-absorbed, over-the-hill parents dead by his
twenty-fifth birthday, Jack has abandoned his own plans and
returned to his parents’ house where he works marathon hours
at his late father’s law firm, beds young paralegals, and
throws money and advice at his teenage brother. Connor meanwhile
wants nothing more than to leave the Midwest, start a family
early, and do everything the way his parents didn’t. But over
the years, through the car crashes and bad breakups, the illnesses
and illicit affairs, both realize that while circumstances
are sometimes beyond control, there are always choices to
be made.
Family and Other Accidents tells
the story of these brothers from their viewpoints as well
as from those of their girlfriends, wives, and children. It
is a story of what it means to be a family, to love unconditionally
in the face of confusion, anger, and regret. Shari Goldhagen’s
debut is a finely nuanced, universally resonant portrait of
the ties, however strange or awkward, that bind families together
through the decades.
Shari Goldhagen holds an MFA from
Ohio State and a journalism degree from Northwestern. A fellow
of both Yaddo and MacDowell, she currently lives in New York
City, where she has stalked celebrities for magazines, including
The National Enquirer, Life & Style, and
Celebrity Living.
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