The Daughters

June 22, 2015
Short story and comics creator Celt interweaves themes of music, motherhood, and myth in her lyrical debut novel. It centers on five generations of a family, specifically the women, all musical and all in some way fatherless. The day her first child is born, successful opera singer Lulu loses her beloved Polish grandmother. After Lulu’s troubled mother, Sara, disappeared when Lulu was nine, grandmother Ada raised the girl, nurturing her promising voice and offering a sense of heritage through vivid tales about Lulu’s great-grandmother Greta. Now an injury sustained during her own daughter’s birth puts a halt to the singing that has driven Lulu’s life and career, while a guilty secret jeopardizes her marriage. The simultaneous birth and losses seem to affirm the family curse: that Greta’s female descendants will each have a daughter of superior musical gifts, but only at a heavy cost. As Lulu nurtures baby Kara and herself, she revisits the conflicting family histories her mother and grandmother have shared and their messages about female legacy, power, and longing. But whether she can heal her family wounds, either past or present, Lulu can’t yet tell. The novel’s luminous prose, subtle structure, and rich contrast between present-day Chicago and Old World folklore help craft a resonant meditation on the way our stories at once shape and sabotage our lives.

June 15, 2015

Lulu, an acclaimed and talented opera singer, is a new mother with a secret: the father of her baby daughter is not her dependable husband, John, but a rich and mysterious opera lover who hired her to perform at his birthday party in the desert. Lulu senses that she is carrying on a family curse begun in the Polish countryside by her great-grandmother Greta, who, according to the tales of Lulu's beloved grandmother Ada, made a Faustian pact with the devil after delivering five stillborn girls. Lulu is pulled between the magic and mystery of Ada's family histories and her mother, Sara's, dismissal of the tales, in favor of cold facts. Ada's mythical stories make Lulu feel special and chosen for greatness and form the backdrop of her childhood in Chicago, especially after Sara, an alcoholic jazz singer, abandons the family. It was Greta's magic that "set our family line in motion: women who came from women, women who came with music." VERDICT A lyrical and poetic debut about the strength of storytelling and mother-daughter love that will appeal to fans of magic realism. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

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