Introduction

The sprawling narrative of five siblings, born in the 1940's, beginning on the day John Kennedy was shot and ending on 9/11. Between these two iconic dates, we follow the fortunes, love affairs, marriages, divorces, successes and failures of the Perls, an immigrant Polish-Jewish family, from the Lower East Side of New York, to Long Island and beyond.

The oldest, Jackie -- a charming, womanizing attorney -- drifts into politics with help from the Nassau County mob. His younger brother, Michael, a gambler and entrepreneur, makes and loses fortunes riding the ebb and flow of high-risk business decisions. Their sister, Elaine, marries young and raises two children before realizing that she wants more from life than being merely a wife and mother and embarking on a new life in her forties. Their sensitive and brilliant half-brother, Stephen, deals with the growing consciousness that he is gay in an era that was not gay friendly. Stephen goes to Vietnam as a medic, comes home, becomes a writer, and survives the AIDS epidemic of the eighties. The baby of the family, Bobbie, high-strung and rebellious, gets pregnant at Woodstock, moves to San Francisco as a single mother during the "Summer of Love," then winds up in Los Angeles as a highly-successful record producer.

In a larger sense this book is not merely the story of one family, but the story of most immigrant families - Jewish, Italian, Irish, African-American - as they enter the melting pot and emerge as a new generation, as well as the story of the tumultuous years of the second half of the twentieth century.

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Excerpt

I

Friday, November 22, 1963, 1:25 p.m. EST.

As Nathan Perl looked out over the cutting floor of J&J Frocks on 38th St., he thought about what his wife Lillian had said to him at breakfast. They were sitting at the aquamarine Formica bar of their kitchen in Garden City and watching television — a habit that he didn’t approve of but had given up complaining about, ever since he had bought the new 15-inch RCA color portable for the kitchen. What’s the point of having it, Lillian had argued, if we don’t use it? ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. Do you feel that the book captures the experiences of most immigrant American families? Or just Jewish American families? Or none?
2. Does the author use the title “An American Family” ironically?
3. Which of the five siblings’ stories did you find most involving?
4. Do you feel that the author captures the zeitgeist of the second half of the twentieth century?
5. Does the book feel autobiographical to you?
6. Did you suspect the surprise at the end of the book regarding 9/11?
7. Were you disappointed in the ending?
8. What would you do to make the story more interesting?
9. Did you relate to the family, even if you are not Jewish or did not grow up in New York?
10. Would you recommend this book to other reading groups?
11. If you’ve read other titles that this author has published, does this book feel different in tone and substance?

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