The Birthdays
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Millers, an ordinary American family, are travelling to a small island off the coast of Maine where they will celebrate their father's 75th birthday. All three adult children are expecting children of their own and at the same time find themselves at major crossroads in their lives. As the Miller family gathers, an unexpected incident shatters the celebrations and it seems that nobody will emerge quite the same.
Written with great emotional and psychological insight, The Birthdays is a journey into the harrowing and redemptive heart of family life.This story of marriage and impending parenthood is certain to establish Heidi Pitlor as a rare new voice in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On a rainy summer weekend, the Miller clan gathers, for the first time in four years, at their summer house on an island off the coast of Maine to celebrate patriarch Joe's 75th birthday. Oldest son Daniel is in a wheelchair following a cycling accident; his wife, Brenda, is pregnant after having used a sperm donor, about whom Daniel is now obsessed. Younger son Jake, who spent his whole childhood feeling insecure and inferior to his siblings, is now more financially successful than either of them; his wife, Liz, is pregnant with twins following fertility treatments and has no interest in sex. The irresponsible youngest, Hilary, returns from the West Coast, also pregnant and with no idea who the father is. As their children stand on the verge of becoming parents themselves, Ellen and Joe reflect on the daily heartbreak, tragedies and joys of parenthood, on the impossibility of ever keeping one's children safe. Rich in symbolism and a strong sense of place, Pitlor's debut novel, with its overlapping narrative perspectives, creates a multilayered portrait of family in all its fragility and its strength.
