Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Gail Sheehy (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2004

Fifty people never came home to Middletown, New Jersey after September 11th. Wall Street fathers, young Port Authority police, single working moms, the beloved coach of the championship girls traveling basketball team. Three toddlers in one church pre-school lost their daddies. Dozens of widows, young and beautiful girls in their 20s and 30s, some still nursing newborns, watched their dreams literally go up in smoke in that amphitheater of death across the river. Gail Sheehy traveled to Middletown shortly after the disaster and began in-depth interviews with many of the bereaved. Middletown, America was written as the year progressed, following parallel and intertwining stories of selected individuals and their families. A mother who was doubly bereft when she lost her only son as he tried to fill the shoes of her absentee husband; the sole survivor in an office of 67 people who escaped the 88th floor of Tower 2 seconds before the floor was decimated. Here are the fire-fighters, rescue workers and front-line public health volunteers, now training to be soldiers in this new war. Of equal importance, however, is the way these very real individuals dealt with this disaster and the trauma that followed. Middletown, America is also a story of recovery and of the ways people finally learn to deal with seemingly insurmountable grief and an incomprehensible physical and financial disaster.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With nearly 50 victims, the commuter hamlet of Middletown, N.J., and its environs suffered the "largest concentrated death toll" on September 11 of anyplace in America. A "town with no middle," Middletown consists of affluent financiers and working-class police officers and firefighters-two groups that were hit particularly hard in the attacks. Bestselling author Sheehy (Passages; Hillary's Choice; etc.), who spent almost two years observing the residents' reactions to the staggering loss, explores how this high-end suburb, for which the closest thing to a social fabric was a ferocious sensitivity to social status, dealt with the tragedy. Sheehy ignores governmental machinations in order to describe the welter of emotions ordinary Americans experienced. The enemy of cliche is detail-and Sheehy's months in the town yield subtle, detailed portraits that confound easy images of "strength" or "denial" (although those are also present). Sheehy implicitly critiques modern American life: any salutary community bonding suggests a prior lack of cohesion, just as the emphasis on financial assistance tends to obscure more fundamental psychological needs. In a community filled with "prefeminist" housewives, "loss of self" became a substantial problem-who am I, if not this or that victim's spouse? Fortunately, in addition to the considerable generosity the town evinced, survivors were able to form an "intentional family" united by grief. One sometimes hears that everyone "knows" what happened on September 11. This admirable book tells precisely the stories we could stand to hear more about. 8 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Sheehy brings the insightfulness she offered in Passages (1976) and Silent Passage (1992) to this examination of the traumatic impact of 9/11 on Middletown, New Jersey, which suffered "the largest concentrated death toll" from the terrorist attacks. The middle- and upper-class enclaves of Middletown are populated by families whose breadwinners work on Wall Street. Sheehy spent more than two years interviewing more than 50 residents to learn how their lives were changed forever. Almost immediately, considerations of "the great green salve" of money intruded, pitting grieving families against corporate interests and prompting criticism of the families as money-grubbers. Sheehy also chronicles the social and psychological changes in an affluent, highly individualistic, not particularly friendly community, where some 9/11 widows progressed from stay-at-home soccer moms to aggressive advocates for investigation into the government's foreknowledge and reaction to the attacks. Sheehy looks beyond the heroic images of the families to show their struggles with issues as huge as faith and as mundane as yard work. She also explores the long and arduous process of recovery for families learning to live with the "new normal" of almost constant fear and anxiety. An incredible close-up look. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio Paperback Audiobooks; Abridged edition (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593552378
• ISBN-13: 978-1593552374
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,510,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gail Sheehy is the world-renowned author of fifteen books, including Passages, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than three years and has been reprinted in twenty-eight languages.

As a literary journalist, Sheehy was one of the original contributors to New York magazine. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 1984, she won the Washington Journalism Review Award for Best Magazine Writer in America for her in-depth character portraits of national and world leaders, including both President Bushes, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Sheehy is a seven-time recipient of the New York Newswomen's Club Front Page Award for distinguished journalism. She currently resides in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Riddled with errors, October 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope (Hardcover)

I live in Rumson and attend Holy Cross Church, two of the locales that figure prominently in the book. While Ms. Sheehy's insight into our community is sometimes on target, her casual disregard for the names of local institutions, their locations, the spelling of proper names, and other easily-checked facts makes me suspect the trustworthiness of those facts that I cannot verify. Riverview Medical Center becomes Riverview Hospital and moves from Red Bank into Middletown; The First Presbyterian Church at Red Bank becomes Tower Hill Presbyterian Church and moves from Red Bank (it's part of the name, for heaven's sake) into Middletown; and Fort Monmouth moves from Eatontown into Middletown (I detect a pattern here). The two-mile-long manmade deepwater pier at NWS Earle becomes a strip of land extending into the bay (if it was a strip of land, you wouldn't be able to dock battleships there!) Red Bank is described as a town with no center, when in fact it has been lauded nationwide as an example of how an aging downtown can be revived and prosper. These are only a few of the most egregious errors; there are many others.

While only a local may notice or care about these things, the sheer number of them gives me the uneasy sense that Ms. Sheehy had a tale to tell from the start, and that facts could be ignored or massaged (or at least callously overlooked) if they got in the way of the story. A few of these errors turned up in the Vanity Fair article of a year and a half ago that presaged this book. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that the gaffes were the result of deadline pressures, and that her fact-checkers would remedy them by the time the book was released. That obviously didn't happen. As a result, it's hard to trust her reporting or conclusions as a whole.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is more a painting than a photograph, October 4, 2003

By 

A. Heath "Love2Heal" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope (Hardcover)

I found the book well-written, and Ms. Sheehy's telling of the stories of these families' journeys was compelling. She did manage to accurately describe certain aspects of pre- and post- 9/11 Middletown Township. Her prose is vivid & evocative and her social commentary about present-day Middletown as a microcosm of upper middle-class White America is poignant. My problem was that, while probably not diminishing its appeal to the general reader, the book is nevertheless riddled with errors of fact about Middletown's history & and Middletown Township (an area far larger than Middletown) geography. A 4th-generation Middletowner, I left when I was 18 to join the service and have only been back to visit family. The fact that I am an African American, and that my ancestors owned a substantial portion of the land making up Middletown would surely surprise anyone who reads this book, as would the fact that streets are named after our family and a Center for local history & memorabilia bears our name. "The Story of Middletown," a book available in the Middletown Public Library, credits my Great, Great Uncle Clinton with founding this town. The ignoring of the historical African American presence in Middletown starting in the late 1800's left me cold and made me think: isn't this omission also a microcosm of America? In her history of Middletown, Ms. Sheehey either intentionally or inadvertantly committed the same sin of omission our American History books have favored by painting a picture rather than taking a photograph & letting the story she wanted to tell shape some of the facts. Nevertheless, I feel the book is still worth reading as a way to more deeply process this traumatic, life-changing turning point in our country. I have a cousin who made it out of the Twin Towers and I do hope this book proves to be helpful to her. I doubt, though, that it will have as healing an effect for her as Ms. Sheehey would have intended, given the insignificant role African Americans ostensibly play in her history of "Middletown, America," a town one of her black reader's ancestors arguably founded.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intimate look at the tragedy of 9-11 - Must read!!!, September 10, 2003

By 

Barbara "barbara11td" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope (Hardcover)

As the second anniversary of 9-11 approached, I decided to purchase Middletown, America. Living in New Jersey, I thought it might be an interesting perspective of the events from those who lived near me. I had no idea how compelling, touching and truly rewarding this book would be and it actually changed my perspective on life. As many of us have "moved on" from the events of 9-11, Gail Sheehy brings into focus the broken lives of many who will never recover fully, and the enormous strength of all of these families to build a life again. After reading this book, I don't think I will ever want to complain about anything ever again!