THE IMMIGRANT'S DAUGHTER

by Howard Fast ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1985

The fifth and last novel in Fast's baggy, sentiment-drenched saga of the California Layette family, launched with The Immigrants (1977). Here the queenpin is Barbara Layette, daughter of grand old Dan (1889-1958), the self-made man. Barbara is now 60, with an activist past encompassing years of fighting the bad guys--from robber bosses and Nazis to McCarthyites and domestic fascists. Since the Layette family not only manifests Fast's utopian vision of the Family of Man (an intermingling of Italians, Jews, WASPS, Chicanos and Chinese), but is into complex marrying and begetting, relationships must be, by this fifth novel, constantly explicated: ""Adam's brother, also Joshua, had been killed during WW II, and the third child of Jake and Clair, Sally Levy, had married Barbara's half-brother Joseph Lavette."" Barbara's story does emerge, however, from the dense genealogical underbrush. Her last and fourth love, Boyd, recently deceased, had once coached Barbara through a Congressional election in a Republican district, which she lost by a respectable margin. Now old politico Tony Moretti urges her to try again. While Barbara runs her campaign, family troubles simmer. Nephew Freddie's marriage to May Ling flounders, as does son Dr. Sam Cohen's to flamboyant Chicana Carla, with whom Freddie falls in love. Meantime, Barbara's WASP Republican opponent wines and dines her before plying his dirty trick. There'll be divorces, two deaths, and a suicide, before Barbara takes off on an assignment from her ex-husband Carson, an L.A. newspaper publisher, to El Salvador. She'll witness atrocities and interview the guerrillas who support Duarte, accept Communist aid and oppose the death-squad chiefs. Barbara loses a fine new friend and barely escapes murder herself before she returns to Carson, and in harness again, organizes a nuclear-freeze march. Billboard sentiment and characters, but by this time Fast's popular tub-thumpers have achieved landmark status. Old home week for the followers of the Layettes' fortunes.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION