num_pages: 192
description: It is the day of her brothers wedding and our narrator is still struggling with her toast. Despite a recent fracture between them her brother Danny has asked her to give a speech and she doesnt know where to begin how to put words to their kind of love. She was nine years old when she traveled with her parents to Thailand to meet her brother six years her junior. They grew up together like any other siblings and shared bucolic childhood in Northern California. Yet when she holds their story up to the light it refracts in ways she doesnt expect.What follows is a heartfelt letter addressed to Danny and an attempt at a full accounting of their years growing up invoking everything from the classic Victorian adoption plot to childless women in literature to documents from Dannys case file. Its also a confession of sorts to the parts of her life that she has kept from him including her own struggle with infertility. And as the hours until the wedding wane she uncovers the words that cant and wont be said aloud.In Immediate Family a tender and fierce debut novel Ashley Nelson Levy explores the enduring bond between two siblings and the complexities of motherhood infertility race and the many definitions of family.
language: English
title: Immediate Family
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux