A novel
AFamily Reunion
The book
Thirteen-year-old Danny Anderson’s mother is bound for San Francisco and a divorce. Danny is bound for Ohio, to grandparents he didn’t know he had.
She has one instruction for the summer: practice the violin half an hour every day. He leaves it on the baggage carousel in Cleveland.
What he wants is the answer to a question no one will touch — why did his mother erase her own family? What he finds is a kitchen table next to the window, where coffee and a garden carry the stories: five sisters, a string of pearls, a lifetime of reunions. And, if he listens hard enough, the answer.
Book club fiction. For readers of Ann Patchett's Tom Lake and William Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace. Complete at 90,000 words.
From the novel
Grandma was pulling into a parking lot. A building falling down, still holding on to its declaration. I could make out what was left of the word PRODUCE on a rotting sign. She stopped the car and got out.
My legs were shaking before I even stood up. I was going to be cool about this. Act like it was no big deal. And now that the time was here I was afraid I would trip over my own feet on my way around the car.
“Is this against the law?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “You go around and get in behind the wheel, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
I made it around the car, all the while hoping that this wasn’t going to end up one of Grandma’s stories. She got in where I had been sitting and closed her door.
A Family Reunion