In alternating and distinct voices, first time novelist Shari Goldhagen shows us the emotionally charged relationship between two brothers over a 25 year period. Jack and Connor Reed are left only with each other after their parents die premature, through unrelated, deaths.

Older brother Jack, 25, returns to Cleveland to take care of 15-year-old Conner. While we follow their lives through the years – Conner learning how to drive, Jack moving up the cooperate ladder in his late father’s law firm, Conner agonizing over whether to have sex with his high school girlfriend or Jack bedding yet another paralegal from his office – it’s clear the brothers love one another, but don’t know how to express it.

Jack is a man not in touch with his feelings. Just ask his wife Mona, a reporter at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, who can’t cut away Jack’s long-buried feelings about his parents. Conner’s wife, Laine, a vivacious blonde vegetarian, is also long suffering as her husband has an affair, then develops a life threatening illness. The Reed brothers don’t always treat their wives fairly or nicely, but through their various misadventures in life, always return to them for some kind of emotional stability.

Family and Other Accidents is told with humor, is often touching and sometimes even wise. Goldhagen’s sharp, realistic writing style has us pulling for these deeply flawed, but likable brothers – but the true heroes in this excellent novel aren’t the brothers but Mona and Laine. Each woman ultimately helps them stay connected with each other and shows them what the meaning of the word “family” is all about.

She now lives in New York, but Goldhagen was born and raised right here in Cincinnati. For her first book, She’s struck gold.

Larry Gross