Rosellen Brown Books

The Reisers were a typical American family. Two loving parents. Two bright teenagers. A lovely home in a small New England town. But then one day the doorbell rang, bringing news of a shattering crime that would turn their son into a stranger and tear their lives in half. As the case unfolds, parent is pitted against parent, brother against sister, family against community. Before and After is a novel that dares us to ask how well we, as families, really know each other and ourselves...dares us to see that one event can change everything...dares us to confront the fine--and shattering--line between guilt and innocence, between love and rage, between before and after.

Miriam Vener Feels Trapped in the Comfortable white middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston during the 1980s. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), her biracial daughter born in Mississippi in the sixties when Miriam was a civil rights activist. Hot tempered, sensitive, manipulative and deeply hurt at her mother's disappearance from her life, Ronnee has been raised by her father, a formerly brilliant college professor who forbade her to see her white mother. Half a Heart charts the emotionally fraught terrain of the mother and daughter's reunion and Ronnee's divided sense of self and loyalty. With which family, and which race, does she identify? How does all this affect her relationships with her newly discovered half-sister, her white boyfriend, and the father she is rebelling against? Half a Heart is a searingly honest novel of public and private ideals betrayed and hopes reignited by one of our foremost novelists.

Als Jacob in Verdacht gerät, den grausamen Tod seiner Klassenkameradin Martha verschuldet zu haben, beginnt für die Familie Reiser ein Alptraum, eine Zerreißprobe, die sie im Innersten verändert. Ein Psychothriller, der bis zum bitteren Ende ohne heroische oder melodramatische Effekte auskommt.

Román zachytáva dramatický príbeh o zápase rodiny Reiserovcov prežiť muky tragédie, ktorá ju nečakane prekvapí. Dej sa odohráva v malom meste a sústreďuje sa na osudové situácie Carolyn a Berna a ich detí Judith a Jacoba. Carolyn je pediatrička. Všetok čas a energiu vynuje práci. Ben je sochár s neobyčajnou predstavivosťou. Ich syn Jacob má sedemnásť rokov a hanblivosťou zakrýva temné stránky svojej povahy. Judith vie o bratovom tajomstve, ktoré vnáša do jej myšlienok a života zmätok. Keď rodinu navštívi policajný náčelník a hľadá Jacoba, aby ho vypočul v súvislosti so smrťou spolužiačky a priateľky, spolužitie rodiny sa náhle zmení...