From Publishers Weekly
Lustbader's debut novel, set in roaring '20s New York, updates the
Rich Man, Poor Man plot with a
Brokeback Mountain twist. David Warshinski, 18, leaves his Jewish family's Lower East Side tenement to join the army, where he meets Jed Gates, grandson of a Manhattan business mogul. When the two friends return from WWI, David cuts off family ties, abandons his religion and changes his name to Shaw, while Jed refuses to acknowledge that he is in love with David. Instead, Jed dutifully marries, fathers a son and goes to work in the family business, keeping David, a financial and marketing genius bent on getting ahead, by his side. Meanwhile, David's sister Sarah, a seamstress still mourning their sister Rose (lost in the Triangle Factory fire) stealthily keeps track of David, and Jed's sister Lucy, a Henry Street Settlement nurse, knows all about David's desires. Lustbader, long time fiction editor at Harper & Row and Putnam, and the spouse of novelist Eric, skillfully envisions history in the making during a time of economic and social change. She falls prey to a few family saga clichés (fraternal feuds, maternal manipulation), but is terrific in depicting her characters' work lives. She transcends the miniseries story line to reveal a promising talent in historical fiction.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Debut novelist Lustbader serves up a luscious historical melodrama as she interweaves the stories of two very different families from the waning days of the Great War through the glittering Roaring Twenties. Poised on the brink of a brilliant career with his grandfather's Wall Street firm, blueblood Jed Gates impulsively enlists in the army to temporarily dodge the weight of familial expectations. On the other end of Manhattan, David Warshinksy, the ambitious son of impoverished Jewish immigrants, views military service as his way out of the Lower East Side and away from his family's crippling neediness. Teaming up together during training and on the battlefields of France, Jed and David form a steadfast bond. After the war, David is reluctantly assimilated into Jed's family against the wishes of domineering matriarch Sally Gates. While Jed and David embark upon a successful business partnership, each struggles with his own inner demons. Tortured by his growing attraction to David, Jed must come to terms with his latent homosexuality. Meanwhile, David falls for Jed's independent, free-spirited sister but is unable to commit himself emotionally until he acknowledges his Jewish heritage and reconciles with his estranged family. This authentically detailed period page-turner is chock-full of passion, romance, and hidden desires.
Margaret FlanaganCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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