The Cantor's Daughter: Stories

The Cantor's Daughter is the compelling new collection from Oregon Book Award Winner and recipient of the GLCA's New Writers Award for 2005, Scott Nadelson.

In his follow-up to Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, these new stories capture Jewish New Jersey suburbanites in moments of crucial transition, when they have the opportunity to connect with those closest to them or forever miss their chance for true intimacy. In "The Headhunter," two men develop an unlikely friendship when Len Siegel, a recruiter, places Howard Rifkin in his ideal job operating a research lab in a pharmaceutical firm's newly formed diabetes department. Len and Howard buy houses on the same street, but after twenty years of mutually supporting each other's families and careers their friendship comes to an abrupt and surprising end. In the title story, Noa Nechemia and her father have immigrated from Israel to Chatwin, New Jersey, following a tragic car accident her mother did not survive. In one stunning moment of insight following a disastrous prom night, Noa discovers her ability to transcend grief and determine the direction of her own life. And in "Half a Day in Halifax" Beth and Roger meet on a cruise ship where their shared lack of enthusiasm for their trip sparks the possibility of romance.

Nadelson's stories are sympathetic, heartbreaking, and funny as they investigate the characters' fragile emotional bonds and the fears that often cause those bonds to falter or fail.

"The most authentic pieces in Nadelson's collection of eight careful stories about suburban New Jersey Jews (after Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories) turn on the inescapable mix of love and destruction in father-son or father-daughter relationships. In 'Model Rockets,' Nadelson's most affecting story, three well-drawn generations are locked in an uncomfortable familial embrace: Benny tries to protect, control and punish his misfit 16-year-old son, Steven, while his father-in-law — and employer — undermines his authority. But Nadelson overloads the title story, about a 16-year-old girl hemmed in by her widowed father's grief and her boyfriend's clichd, self-serving romantic fantasies until she arrives at a feminist epiphany that feels unearned. Elsewhere, Nadelson diagrams ugly undercurrents to family dynamics or depicts lonely people yearning to connect while their relationships stall on resentment and self-doubt, as in 'Half a Day in Halifax,' about a doomed affair between two homely singles on a Carnival cruise. Nadelson bears unflinching witness to his characters' darkness — murderous sibling rivalry, self-loathing, selfishness — but he telegraphs too much. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"These stories are rich, involving, and multi-layered. They draw you in gradually, so that you become immersed in these characters and their lives almost without realizing it. An enticing collection." Diana Abu-Jaber, author of The Language of Baklava and Crescent

Scott Nadelson is the author of Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, winner of the Oregon Book Award for short fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. He teaches at Willamette University.