Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America

In 1945 Samuel Gordon, an electrician, returned home to the Bronx in New York City after the close of World War II and began his search for the American dream by moving with his wife Eve and daughter Susan to suburban Long Island. In this moving, perceptive social history, Katz ( The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears ) traces the lives of the Gordon family, which swelled to include two more daughters and a son, to the year 1990, revisiting the cultural changes of four decades. The Gordon children, to their parents' occasional distress and bewilderment, flirted with political activism and addictive drugs, knew both marriage and divorce and found New Age religion. Their son Ricky ``came out''--happily gay. Katz's objective yet compassionate approach to their story makes riveting reading and fosters the conclusion that upheaval and trauma are as integral to families as love. 50,000 first printing; $65,000 ad/promo; first serial to Esquire; author tour. (June)