num_pages: 286
description: An epic tale of one iconoclastic family's inheritance of madness  and money  in Brooklyn Taiwan and Northern CaliforniaIn booming postwar Brooklyn the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowaks only son David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend Marianne Davids life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame  the sharp-tongued intelligent Daisy. Returning to the United States the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern Californias Polk Valley. As David's health deteriorates he has a brief affair with Marianne producing a daughter. Its Daisy's solution for the future of her two children inspired by the old Chinese tradition of raising girls as sisterly wives for adoptive brothers that exposes Daisys traumatic life and the terrible inheritance her children must receive. Framed by two suicide attempts The Border of Paradise is told from multiple perspectives culminating in heartrending fashion as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune confront their past and their isolation.
language: English
title: The Border of Paradise
publisher: The Unnamed Press