From the author of the best-selling memoir Slow Motion (“Chilling . . . her vision is unblinking”— New York Times Book Review ; “Riveting . . . a breathtaking combination of candor and bravado”— San Francisco Chronicle ), a ferociously paced new novel about a woman losing control of her life, her marriage, and her kids, and discovering that you can do everything right and still find the world you’ve made slipping away. Rachel Jensen has it all: a husband she adores, challenging work in art restoration, a terrific teenage daughter, and a new baby on the way. Then her infant son is injured in an accident in her daughter’s arms, and that accident begets a terrifying lie. Set in a small Massachusetts town, Family History is about a family spiraling toward disintegration, the terrible force of guilt in children, and a mother’s nightmarish realization that she cannot protect her own child. As the life the Jensens have so carefully built begins its slow collapse, we see with excruciating clarity the frailty of our strongest allegiances and the precarious ledge upon which our most vital relations—marriage, parenthood—are balanced. Family History blazes through this intimate and highly charged territory with stunning velocity, and marks a bold new step forward for the prodigiously gifted Dani Shapiro. In Family History , Dani Shapiro has written such a nail biter of a plot that it's easy to overlook just how good--and how literary--a novel this really is. Narrator Rachel Jenson is a housewife and art restorer married to Ned, a one-time painter. They live with their two children, 13-year-old Kate and 2-year-old Josh, in the small New England town where Ned grew up. In an elegant series of flashbacks, we learn of the emotional devastation teenage Kate has wrought. She was a perfect child growing up, but once Josh came along, her dark thoughts and tragic actions nearly destroy her family. As secret after secret is revealed, Shapiro gets perfectly Rachel's horror of daily life: how can you chat with the other moms at preschool when your world is falling apart? But what makes Family History a fine novel is its utter freedom from stereotype. Kate is bad, but she's never the bad seed; Ned's a failure, but he's not a total wash; Rachel's a narrator mired in tragedy, but she's a wry, slightly unreliable narrator mired in tragedy. Shapiro knows just how much hope to give her characters. In the end, their redemption is so slight that we actually believe in it. --Claire Dederer A baby is accidentally injured while being held by his sister, and the ensuing cover-up eventually tears the family apart. From the author of the celebrated memoir Slow Motion. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. The author of three novels and, most recently, the best-selling memoir, Slow Motion (1998), Shapiroreturns to fiction with a high-anxiety drama about a suburban wife and mother faced with the prospect of losing her family. Rachel Jensen is having trouble getting out of bed. She spends her time watching family videotapes, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it all unraveled. Her teenage daughter, Kate, has been institutionalized after accidentally dropping and severely injuring her newborn brother, Joshua. Her husband, Ned, has moved out, cut to the quick by his daughter's unreasonable accusations of abuse, which she made out of deep anger, confusion, and guilt. He has lost his job as a teacher and is forced to take a job selling real estate for his parents' company. Through a series of skillfully executed flashbacks, Shapiro limns the recurring themes of this particular family's dynamics, with frustration, regret, and second-guessing taking center stage. Although Shapiro has many insightful things to say about marriage and parenthood, this is domestic drama done, not with the subtle analysis of Sue Miller, but with the emotional wattage of Elizabeth Berg. Joanne Wilkinson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “This gripping narrative has the deeply felt emotional fidelity of a true story; it’s a book readers will finish in one sitting. The physicality of Rachel’s maternal love—the need of a mother to touch her child, to feel it breathe—is almost palpable. Shapiro writes luminously about marital love and contented domestic routines, and with brutal insight about the corrosive misery of guilt and shame. Crafted with assurance, this novel holds a mirror to contemporary life.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “From the first page to the last, Family History is virtually impossible to put down: a beautifully structured, tightly woven exploration of the mysteries of adolescent pain, and the brutal efficiency with which a crisis can engulf a family and transform it into something unrecognizable.” --Jennifer Egan “No family is ever entirely fathomed, even by itself–the map must be drawn new each time. In Family History , Dani Shapiro trains her abundant gifts as a writer on one family st