Claudia Silver to the Rescue

In her fiction debut, screenwriter and NBC Universal Creative Director Ebel returns to the early ’90s to tell the story of 24-year-old Claudia Silver, who is trying valiantly to learn how to live after growing up in a dysfunctional family from which she is now estranged. Claudia is fired from her production assistant job and then her 16-year-old sister Phoebe, last seen two years ago, appears on Claudia’s Brooklyn doorstep, desperate to escape their crazy mother and her abusive deadbeat boyfriend. How can Claudia refuse? But as well-meaning as she is, Claudia’s hunger for love and lack of a normal vantage point for healthy relationships vastly complicate matters, and she winds up in an ill-advised affair, which ends a longtime friendship and breaks up several households. So who, in the final analysis, will rescue whom? The author delivers a satisfying and unexpected answer to that question. Readers will root for this deeply flawed but ultimately appealing heroine. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Donow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)