The Believers by Zoe Heller

"Heller (What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal) returns with an engrossing story of a severely dysfunctional New York family struggling to find its place in a quickly changing world. Joel Litvinoff, a famous civil rights lawyer, and his acerbic wife, Audrey, have spent their many years together as political protesters, raising their children with the same radical social consciousness. But when Joel suffers a stroke, the family, never a peaceful unit to begin with, loses what little cohesion it had. Eldest daughter Rosa, who had always mirrored her parents' views, decides to embrace Orthodox Judaism. Her meek and unattractive sister, Karla, a social worker married to a critical, arrogant union man, has an affair. Adopted son Lenny, an addict and ne'er-do-well, decides to sober up and get a job. Audrey remains in contention with all of them, angry that Rosa would stoop to religion, remorselessly picking on Karla's weight, and denigrating Lenny's efforts to remake his life apart from her. Heller writes with insight and honesty about the pain involved in testing one's beliefs and the possibility of growth in the process."

~ Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information