First published 2017
Annabelle Gurwitch grew up surrounded by relatives who redefined family dysfunction. Her clan included bootleggers, gamblers, and philanderers who treated family as people you could borrow money from, hold grudges against, or blackmail. As a child, she secretly hoped she was actually Joni Mitchell's lost daughter or the reincarnated Russian princess Anastasia. Years later, Gurwitch realized she had repeated many of the same patterns as her predecessors, just in different locations. She explores her southern Jewish heritage while examining the surrogate families she collected along the way: theater people, pet enthusiasts, sisterhood members, and the ladies who gather for brunch at Tel Aviv Gardens Retirement Home in Miami. Her inheritance consists of a small plot on Massacre Island, split five ways between relatives. Through sharp observations and hard-won insights, Gurwitch argues that family traditions, rituals, and recipes deserve celebration despite their accompanying insanity. She delivers both social commentary and personal revelation about the inescapable bonds that tie us to the people we share holiday meals with each year.
Genres: family, american, autobiography, memoir, 21st-century, jewish
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, personal-journey
Setting: Miami, Massacre Island
Period: 21st Century
302 pages · Hardcover · Blue Rider Press