A family reunion in wintry 1940s New York brings together the descendants of a renowned composer's widow, causing disturbing secrets to be revealed as family members share their memories of the past. Reprint. LJ.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A mystery lies at the core of this family saga from the author of Shadow Mountain : What has become of certain invaluable manuscripts composed by Michael Shane, a veteran songwriter dead since 1950 and about to be feted at a 75th-birthday salute at New York City's Lincoln Center? An enormous--frequently unmanageable--cast are all in some manner implicated in the works' disappearance: three fractious generations of Shanes, an unsavory group of Broadway producers and lawyers and some shadowy figures from Hollywood. Michael's widow Julia fears that her son Scott, a tax attorney, wants the music for his own avaricious ends, while Scott's socially prominent wife has a startling revelation for her husband. Many apparently innocuous characters are not what they seem, including Murray Baker, Michael's erstwhile collaborator and an early confidant of Julia's, who gives new meaning to the words treachery and betrayal. Despite occasional melodrama and bathos, the novel is buoyed by entertaining character portraits and pleasingly unexpected plot twists. 50,000 first printing; national advertising; first serial to Good Housekeeping.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Segal (Shadow Mountain, LJ 5/1/90) here offers a generational saga centering on Julia, the widow of a famous composer named Michael who died in the late 1940s, leaving Julia with two sons to raise. She remarried George Rhinehart, with whom she had a daughter and a long, happy marriage that has recently ended with his death. The action is divided between the current career and marital problems of Julia's now-grown children and flashbacks to Julia's love affair with Michael, whose character is based on George Gershwin. A natural for vacations, this entertaining potboiler is filled with romance, infidelity, the search for personal fulfillment, and a mystery surrounding Michael's lost musical scores. Segal has a few too many plot lines, but the pace is fast and the characters appealing. Recommended for light fiction collections.
Harriet Gottfried, NYPL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Harriet Gottfried, NYPL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
As a girl in Wilkes-Barre,PA, Harriet Segal wrote short stories, poems and plays for school publications. After graduating from Wellesley College, she had various writing jobs as a copywriter, a journalist, and free-lance editor. Living in India during the early 1960s with her scientist husband, she wrote pamphlets for the U.S. Information Agency. But it was not until her three daughters were in high school that she began to pursue a lifelong dream: to write a novel.
SUSQUEHANNA was published in 1984 to critical acclaim. The generational saga of an immigrant family from Eastern Europe, it is set in the anthracite coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania, where Segal grew up. It was soon followed by CATCH THE WIND, the love story of two doctors, with rich backgrounds in Peru, Paris and India. Next came SHADOW MOUNTAIN, a novel of the American South, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; and THE SKYLARK'S SONG--a Good Housekeeping Novel of the Month--the story of a woman whose life is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit.
Harriet Segal has been described as a story teller with a strong narrative voice and a talent for painting evocative settings and memorable characters. Now a grandmother of seven, she has recently moved from New York to the Boston suburbs and spends her summers on Cape Cod. Her latest novel, THE EXPATRIATE, has been released as an eBook.
SUSQUEHANNA was published in 1984 to critical acclaim. The generational saga of an immigrant family from Eastern Europe, it is set in the anthracite coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania, where Segal grew up. It was soon followed by CATCH THE WIND, the love story of two doctors, with rich backgrounds in Peru, Paris and India. Next came SHADOW MOUNTAIN, a novel of the American South, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; and THE SKYLARK'S SONG--a Good Housekeeping Novel of the Month--the story of a woman whose life is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit.
Harriet Segal has been described as a story teller with a strong narrative voice and a talent for painting evocative settings and memorable characters. Now a grandmother of seven, she has recently moved from New York to the Boston suburbs and spends her summers on Cape Cod. Her latest novel, THE EXPATRIATE, has been released as an eBook.
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