title: Clandance
author: Kastler, Kitty
description: A life saga, a sweet old-fashioned love story, Clan Dance is a tale of two families battered by adversity, of two people burying their hearts in their work. And so these two mid-thirties workaholics find each other and struggle through obstacles - miscommunications, travel schedules, family secrets and intrusions, and insecurities borne of tragedy - to carve out a relationship. Claire Carragan, a corporate law attorney whose life has become putting together the largest restructuring in corporate history, catches the attention of Dennis Kerrigan, an investment banker who works in the same office building. Within moments, as he overhears her almost hostile banter with a co-worker, he realizes that this fiery, attractive young woman is the solution to his lonely, meaningless life. A cup of coffee, a dinner date, and an invitation to a day at the racetrack all play out shyly, slowly; both afraid of moving too fast, both just struggling free of their emotionally battering histories. Amid the uncompromising pace of their business lives they find a common ground, the family - clan - dance contests at a Cape Cod summer town. From an errant priest, a murdered child, a parent hazed in denial, the seething resentments of a child lost in the shuffle, and a district attorney with the strangest secret of all, they learn that Clan Dance is perhaps a euphemism for the dances that families do to each other, rather than with each other. It could be anyone's story; people going about their lives, hoping for the best, hoping for love, hoping for hope's sake. And they're almost there. Just minutes from living happily ever after, 9/11 strikes to prove that life is so full of you-never-knows.