Years of Dreams [Hardcover]

In an intense and passionate novel, Goldreich ( Leah's Journey ) chronicles the close, 20-year relationship begun when four remarkable young women meet in a New York City park the day President Kennedy is assassinated. Merle Cunningham is a promising violinist who is cosseted by her wealthy and devoted husband. Brilliant and acerbic Anne Richardson is determined to become a physician. Rutti Weisenblatt, a survivor of the Holocaust, nurtures her unstable mate while she attends art school. Nancy Yallon, married to an Israeli doctor, juggles priorities as she studies for her doctorate in psychology. Whie these early feminists are exhilarated to be in the vanguard of a new generation of independent women, they pay a heavy price for their achievements. Their husbands and, at times, their children are at best judgmental and, worse, unforgiving. Complex and fully realized, the women open windows on the major issues of the 1960s and '70: the war in Vietnam, student protests, Watergate. Particularly compelling are detailed scenes set in Israel during the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars. A rich and satisfying tale with a bitter, angry edge written by an adroit raconteur.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Goldreich, whose other novels (Mothers, 1989, etc.) are chock- full of vacant, if nobly emoting, characters squashy with sentiment, offers more of the same in this tale about the deep friendship of four Manhattan-based women from the 1960's through 1983. Through the years, the four shoot into fame, fortune, and/or fulfilling career while locating love--and themselves--in history: ``[the beginning of the 60's] was our decade--the decade of youth and hope, the decade when we'd turn the world around.'' (They tend to talk like that.) Among the four who gather for the first time--a time of shock- -to hear reports of the assassination of JFK: Merle, the hostess, whose house was ``scented with wealth,'' whose husband, kind and loving, was nonetheless a heavy, domination-wise; Rutti, poverty- stricken wife of deteriorating Werner, both Holocaust victims; Nancy, whose handsome Israeli physician husband Dov, has no interest in her potential career; and Anne, who is determined to earn an M.D. The women will find liberation--Nancy through divorce, Merle through subterfuge, and, after Werner's sacrificial death in Israel, Rutti during widowhood. But it is Anne who will shock even her friends--with an abortion and then later a pregnancy, father unknown for some time. Rutti is an internationally famous artist; Merle is an internationally famous violinist and composer; Dr. Anne and psychologist Nancy also do well. New loves (and two husbands) appear; children mature; there are deaths and crises. And at the close, the quartet will weep together--in deathless friendship. High-minded corn, buttery smooth and irresistible to Goldreich's definitive readership. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A moving story that spans three decades chronicles the lives of four women struggling to realize their visions while clinging to a friendship that survives through trust and betrayal, devotion and desertion, and a shocking twenty-year-old secret.