A seemingly innocent question in the first chapter sets the plot of Steven Amsterdam's What the Family Needed in motion. Young Alek asks his teenaged cousin Giordana, "Okay, tell me which you want: to be able to fly or be invisible?" Giordana answers "Invisible," and within minutes, she is.
Each subsequent chapter, though linked by characters and setting, provides a distinct view of another family member: Natalie (Alek's mother), Ben (Giordana's brother), Ruth (the mother of Giordana and Ben), Sasha (Alek's brother), Peter (Alek and Sasha's father) and, finally, Alek himself. Over the course of three decades, family members discover that they, too, possess a supernatural gift, just when they need help.
Amsterdam (Things We Didn't See Coming) has chosen a particularly challenging theme for his novel, but manages to succeed in telling each family member's story with subtle honesty and--most importantly--absolute believability. Giordana's welcome invisibility comes just as her parents end their unhappy marriage; Ruth, a lonely and overworked nurse, can suddenly hear the thoughts of her dying patients. Peter, reeling after the death of his wife, finds he can make some of his unspoken desires come true.
As the family members age, move away or reconnect, their relationships with one another are shaped by time as well as by their supernatural gifts (and how they choose to use them). What The Family Needed is an extraordinary novel, and readers will be thinking about it long after they finish. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore