Family Drama : A Novel

Omtale

Magnificent. Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country A vibrant debut and powerful meditation on family, motherhood, and the cost of holding on to your dreams, reminiscent of Ann Napolitano.In New England, Susan Bliss is a young mother married to a professor. In LA, Susan Byrne stars in a soap opera beloved coast to coast. Decades after shes gone, her twins have no idea of their mothers fame. But the past cant stay hidden forever. Its 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled seven-year-olds watch as their mothers body is tipped overboard a crumbling boat. A Viking funeral, followed by a raucous wake. A send-off fit for soap opera star: Susan Bliss. Fifteen years earlier, Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. Its impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, doeshopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susans two-paneled life: an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her life in New England as a wife and mother to young twins to the bright lights of Los Angeles, where she becomes the beloved star of a daytime soap. In the present, Susans twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mothers torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mothers old costar Orson Greynow a renowned Hollywood starshe finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew. Sharp, assured, and beautifully written, Family Drama is a story told in double-helix, with intertwined timelines that explore the different versions of ourselves we share with the world and with each other.