This is Allegra Goodman's debut novel, which follows her highly acclaimed short-story collections Total Immersion, published when she was 21 years old, and The Family Markowitz. In Kaaterskill Falls, she provides access to the minds and hearts of a set of characters during the years 1976 to 1978. There are two births. There is a death. Pastries are baked.
Land is sold.
Holidays come and go. Nothing, it would seem to write home about. Yet the characters confront individual crises that have the ability to crush and destroy a spirit, a marriage, a family, a place in the community. Remarkably, Goodman portrays her characters as possessors of souls rather than issues, as people who struggle with moral dilemmas without whining, who face life in all its complexity and confusion without opting out or blaming their mothers, and, above all, who are unique and multifaceted. The Kirshners are tightly knit and tightly circumscribed.