Degrees of Love
-
- 9,49 €
-
- 9,49 €
Descrizione dell’editore
In the tradition of The Good Mother and The Deep End of the Ocean, a beautifully written first novel about a family's worst nightmare.
Jack Keliher and Lily Sterne lead ordinary lives. But when their eighteen-month-old daughter, Katie, is accidentally burned while home alone with Lily and rushed to the hospital, their ordered world begins to unravel. An emergency room physician's report brings the state to take temporary custody of Katie, setting in motion a bureaucratic ordeal in which Lily and Jack are faced with every parent's worst fear: that their child will be taken away from them. Lily fears that her history of mental instability and postpartum depression will be used against her; Jack, in turn, blames Lily. Rachel Basch's quietly compelling narrative alternates between the voices of Jack and Lily as they reveal their increasingly divergent responses to the accident and its consequences. Their fierce struggle to keep their baby safe begins to take its toll on their relationship and their lives, and they are forced to grapple with the emotional and spiritual differences that slowly drive them apart. This exquisite novel's power reaches far beyond the story of an accident and its effect on a family. In depicting the anguish of a family in crisis, Basch has written a stunning work about the nature of privacy, the relationship of work and self, and the fragility--and ultimately, the importance--of love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A good mother is brought low by well-meaning officials in this first novel, a poignant portrait of a family in crisis. When the youngest of their three children pulls a pot of boiling water off the stove and is severely burned on the leg and feet, parents Lily Sterne and Jack Heliher find that exhaustion, worry and nights in the burn unit are only the beginning of their problems. An E.R. doctor files a complaint that leads to a child-abuse investigation, and the investigation snowballs until baby Katie must be released into state custody, with Lily allowed to see the child only under the supervision of Jack's mother. After a suspenseful, deftly handled climactic court scene, Lily and Jack must deal with the fallout of the incident, their already strained marriage and the troubled reaction of their oldest boy. Basch takes what might have been a grim, newsy subject and spins a rich, surprising page-turner. Readers will be delighted by Basch's flesh-and-blood characters, her beautifully structured chapters and her eloquent insights into both the alchemy of marriage and the hard moments that come with parental love.