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Dancing with Einstein
Kate Wenner. Simon & Schuster: 2004 (hardcover). ISBN: 0743251644. 223 pages.
Guide not available
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A wonderful story of a young woman who cheats on her shrink with another therapist. But polygamatherapist Marea Hoffman isn't stopping there. When fate drops a third, then a fourth psychologist into her lap, she decides to go for all the help she can. At the age of thirty, having wandered the world for the past seven years, Marea decides it's time to face the questions that have kept her running for so long.
The story she tells her therapists is in some ways typical of a 1950's childhood - McCarthy on television and "duck and cover" drills at school reinforce the ever-lurking terror of a nuclear attack. But the horrors of war and annihilation live especially close to home for this little girl. Marea's beloved father, Jonas Hoffman, a holocaust survivor for whom the threat of fascism is only too real, worked on the Manhattan Project and later on the building of the hydrogen bomb. Jonas's continued involvement in the development of weapons of mass destruction creates harsh discord in the family-he is opposed by both his Quaker wife and the Hoffman's close friend, Albert Einstein. Now, with the help of four very different mental health professionals, Marea seeks to discover the truth about her father's death and her own travels to the edges of the earth. Kate Wenner's writing and characterization is crisp, sharp, and resonant. Our book groups in Denver are crazy for this novel, and call it a must-read for 2004.
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