Half a Heart [Paperback]

Rosellen Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 2001

A moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging from the bestselling author of Before and After

Miriam Vener feels trapped in the comfortable white middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston during the 1980s. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), her biracial daughter born in Mississippi in the sixties when Miriam was a civil rights activist. Hot tempered, sensitive, manipulative and deeply hurt at her mother’s disappearance from her life, Ronnee has been raised by her father, a formerly brilliant college professor who forbade her to see her white mother. Half a Heart charts the emotionally fraught terrain of the mother and daughter’s reunion and Ronnee’s divided sense of self and loyalty. With which family, and which race, does she identify? How does all this affect her relationships with her newly discovered half-sister, her white boyfriend, and the father she is rebelling against? Half a Heart is a searingly honest novel of public and private ideals betrayed and hopes reignited by one of our foremost novelists.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As she has amply proven throughout her distinguished career, Brown (Civil War; Before and After) tackles timeless, yet timely, moral issues with the insight and gravity of one who has been on the frontlines of social change. Here she returns to the civil rights era in a gripping novel tracing the lives of several people who participated in that struggle and continue to live in its shadow. In the 1960s, when Jewish graduate student Miriam Starobin went from Texas to Mississippi to teach history at an all-Black college, she had an affair with charismatic African-American music professor Eljay Reece. Their relationship ended acrimoniously after Miriam gave birth to their daughter, Veronica, and Eljay claimed the child and drove Miriam out of their lives. Now, 17 years later, in what at first seems a miraculous fulfillment of her hopes, Miriam gets a letter from her daughter Ronnee, on her way to Stanford on a scholarship. Miriam, married to successful physician Barry Vener, mother of three, and resident of an opulent Houston suburb, has kept Ronnee's existence a secret, and she does not realize how difficult it will be to acknowledge this biracial young woman as her daughter. The strains in their wary relationship are exacerbated by latent racism among Miriam's family and friends, and the overt bigotry of the larger world. Meanwhile, Ronnee is pursuing her own secret agenda. Raised by her father to be tough, pragmatic and manipulative--and to consider herself black-- Ronnee sees Miriam not as a cherished parent but as a cash cow whose money will augment her scholarship. Yet she is also a typical teenager, affectingly credible in her desire to be accepted by her peers. Always a master of plotting, Brown brings events to a suspenseful climax through a nightmarish situation and its shattering aftermath. The narrative is most convincing in its psychological truths, depicting the challenges that both women must surmount: Miriam in leaving the safe harbor of upper-middle-class conformity, Ronnee in relinquishing her self-protective defenses and recognizing the part of herself that is a member of a white Jewish family. Provocative questions of moral, social and familial responsibility, of racial relationships, and of the claims of history on individual identity, keep surfacing in this fiercely candid novel, surely one of Brown's most challenging, intelligent and masterful accomplishments. 75,000 first printing; BOMC featured alternate; audio rights to Simon & Schuster Audio; 10-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A middle-class white woman must face the biracial child she abandoned.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 402 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (May 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312278306
• ISBN-13: 978-0312278304
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #954,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whole Hearted Praise for "Half A Heart", May 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Half a Heart (Hardcover)

Rosellen Brown has created very real and all-too human characters in this vivid book. Miriam and Ronnee's struggles to accept themselves, to accept one another, and to accept the past are powerful and painful. The complex issues of race, motherhood (and daughterhood), class, and honesty are addressed beautifully, with powerful prose and visceral descriptions. Brown enters the heads of both characters with equal strength and emotional intuition. Highly recommended!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars kept me up all night, May 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Half a Heart (Hardcover)

I had already read a quarter of this book when the fairly bad reviews came out, but I plugged along anyway. Half way through the book, the plot really came together, and by the end (which was the part that kept me up), I was very moved. A lot of questions which are never answered are frustrating, such as why she agreed to give up the baby in the first place, but in the main, I thought it was a very touching and well written book. Maybe having a daughter of the same age, I felt all the emotions more strongly, but I am anxious to read more by this author.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Decide for Yourself, May 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Half a Heart (Hardcover)

Hard to believe I read the same book these reviewers are trashing. It's far more complex and sympathetic on all sides, not sentimental but challenging (maybe that's the problem)and unwilling to accept easy stereotypes. Ronnee is no "tragic mulatto" -- she may be confused but she's much too dignified for that. And her father is no big black brute. So what's going on here? Protecting the turf,to keep white writers from poaching on territory that isn't "theirs"? I guess readers will have to decide for themselves but they should read "Half a Heart" and make up their own minds.