FAMILY DRAMA

A novel with an unusual timeline, one that teeters between a woman’s determination to have an acting career in the 1980s and her small family’s future difficulties.

Once, women in Salem, Massachusetts, were tried and convicted as witches due to their supposedly superhuman abilities. Bewitchingly beautiful Susan Byrne plays one of the Salem witches at a local museum for an agonizingly long three years as she waits for a break that will get her to stardom. Before that break arrives, she meets tenure-track historian Alcott Bliss; they fall in love and marry, and Susan agrees to remain in his beloved Boston environs. Perhaps playing an alleged witch affected her more than she realized, as Susan seems superhuman when she lands a recurring role on a long-running daytime soap opera and begins an arduous weekly commute between coasts—even after the young couple agrees to start a family. As scenes of their twins, Sebastian and Viola, years later alternate with scenes of Susan and Al’s increasingly strained relationship, it seems something has to give. Readers will know what that something is from the opening chapter set during Susan’s funeral when the twins are 7, but the expert shuffle between the two time periods will keep them invested in the familial sleight of hand so many will practice in the early years of parenthood. The dealer’s-choice structure allows Seb and Lola to reach adulthood without feeling tethered in roles as progeny; they love and hate their parents in differing amounts at different times, while remaining individuals capable of real achievements and heartbreaking mistakes. The contrast of Susan’s foreshortened career with her best friend Orson Grey’s ascending stardom might be employed in one plot twist too far, yet this bit of business serves to underline one of the kid’s mistakes. In the end, like the soap opera Susan stars in, this drama allows readers to “dissolve; feel your own problems grow trivial against the melodrama, against the height of what a human can feel.”

The author’s emotional intelligence shines through in this affecting novel’s quirky, evolving characters.