Unaccepted college admissions offers--a generation apart--symbolize working-class families' thwarted dreams in memoirist Connie Schultz's first novel, The Daughters of Erietown.
When rural Ohio high school senior Ellie gets pregnant in 1957, she and her boyfriend, Brick, trade his basketball scholarship and her nurse training for a rental house and his union card. Brick tolerates the menial labor at Erietown Electric, while Ellie budgets their funds and nurtures firstborn Samantha and their son. They're content, but eventually Brick's frustration and good looks lead him to infidelity, a mistake with devastating repercussions. Ellie's stoicism preserves the family, and both she and Samantha flourish with the rise of feminism. (Ellie buys Sam Our Bodies, Ourselves; Sam gives her mother Marilyn French's The Women's Room.) But when Sam gets a full scholarship to Smith, consistently class-conscious Brick demands she decline the "charity."
Schultz opens the novel in 1975, as the family takes Sam to nearby Kent State, then moves back to 1957, emphasizing that now Sam is fulfilling her parents' dream. Continuing through 1994, The Daughters of Erietown spans four decades of shifting social mores and illustrates how a family's love can temper the impact of even the most hurtful secrets. A Pulitzer-winning journalist, Schultz wrote …And His Lovely Wife: A Campaign Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, about her role while her husband, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, ran for office. With this novel, she demonstrates a deep affection for working-class families and a knowing eye for regional culture. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller, Market Block Books, Troy, N.Y.