From Publishers Weekly
This upbeat, exuberant journey of discovery follows Emma Fine, a keen-eyed, independent-minded Jewish girl from her home in West Cypress, La., to Atlanta, New York and then California in a restless search for her own identity. Emma's quest begins with her background, a crazy quilt of confusing ethnic mixtures. Her natural mother, Helen Kaplan, was born in an obscure Georgia hamlet and died shortly after Emma's birth. Her father, Jake Fine, is a taciturn and morose New Yorker not far removed from the pale of Eastern Europe. Lonely and incapable of caring for Emma after Helen's death, Jake arranges a marriage of convenience with Rosalie Norris, a rigid and uncompromising Baptist from West Cypress. As Emma matures into a stunning, highly intelligent and sensual young woman, her questions about the past are met with confusion and evasion by both Jake and Rosalie. In her ultimate act of rebellion, Emma marries Jesse Tree, an extraordinarily talented black sculptor she meets in California. The headstrong and unyielding couple are headed for marital disaster when Emma returns once more to West Cypress only to be badly jolted by further revelations about her natural parents. This strong, firmly controlled coming-of-age novel has memorable, sharply defined characters.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Although this novel begins as a story of the rise and fall of a mixed contemporary marriage, the thread is lost as the backgrounds of all the primary characters surrounding protagonist Emma Fine are told. Emma asks numerous questions: Why did her father, a Jewish man from the north, marry and live with her mother, a penny-pinching spinster from the south? And why did her parents show so little affection toward each other? Could her parents' strained marriage account for Emma's eagerness to get out of her small hometown? Or to experience sex? Or to marry a black man, gifted artist though he is. Emma's obviously troubled marriage provides ample issues to explore, making it unnecessary to dredge up her parents' histories. Her search for herself just doesn't add up. Disappointing. Marion Hanscom, SUNY at Binghamton Lib.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
