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When Sadie looks out her window and sees
her bother standing on the front lawn she knows he can’t bring
good news. Fidgeting over coffee with sugar and cream he explains:
Their sister is gone. Three days earlier Goldie left to go
shopping and she has not returned.
With Goldie’s disappearance as the catalyst,
The First Desiretakes us deep into the life of the
Cohen family and Buffalo, New York, from the Great Depression
to the years immediately following World War II. Shifting
perspectives from siblings Sadie, Jo, Goldie, and Irving we
learn of the secrets they have managed to keep hidden—and
of Lillian, the beautiful woman their father took as a lover
while his wife was dying. In this astonishing novel Reisman
brings to life the love, grief, and desires that ultimately
bind one family together.
Nancy Reisman is the author of House
Fires, a short story collection that won the 1999 Iowa
Short Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in, among other
anthologies and journals, Best American Short Stories 2001,
Tin House, and The Kenyon Review. She has received
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives in Ann Arbor,
where she currently teaches creative writing at the University
of Michigan.
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