When a massive explosion destroys an American office building and images of innocent civilians dead or maimed hit the news channels, accusations and conspiracy theories—about Arabs, Jews, Christians, the FBI, the government—start flying. Breaking and Entering depicts an America divided by religion, sexuality, and fear, its coasts and heartlands talking at, not to, each other. It’s 1995: Timothy McVeigh has just bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and Louise Shapiro, a school counselor who has recently moved from California to Michigan with her husband Richard and their daughter Molly, is trying to settle into a town where her neighbors believe the government to be the enemy and her students consider homosexuality the work of Satan. Breaking and Entering brings a range of wonderful characters to life, telling with warmth their trials with accidental forest fires, mixed-religion marriages, and running away from home.
The Shapiros buy a house near the Wolverine Sportsmans Club Keep Out; their only neighbors are brain-damaged Em, a practicing Wiccan, and the Bankses, mother-and-son farmers who make ends meet by holding Easter Egg hunts and selling fireworks and Bill Clinton-shaped targets. The Bankses are members of the Michigan Militia, whose meetings McVeigh once attended. Can Louise trust Em to look after Molly? Can she have meaningful conversations with the Bankses, given the Militia Babes calendar on their porch and that hulking Matt sees Tax Day as an excuse to use his 1040 for target practice? Just how different is Matt’s anti-tax stance from Louise’s California friends who protest nuclear armament by mailing in blank 1040s? Breaking and Entering challenges the stereotypes we hold about our fellow Americans while reminding us of the unexpected bonds that can form across the divide between so-called Red and Blue states.
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Acclaim
“A big, provocative novel that sets an intimate story about a passionate affair against a troubling backdrop of right-wing violence and extremism. Eileen Pollack is a brave writer, plunging without fear into the murky waters of sex, religion, and politics.” —Tom Perrotta
“A very real accomplishment—an admirable, serious, and important novel of ideas that does not neglect characters.” —Antonya Nelson
“Eileen Pollack takes on the taboos and mores of Middle America—religious, ethnic, sexual, political—with boldness, wit and ultimately a surprising and serious sympathy.” —Peter Ho Davies
REVIEWED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
NAMED A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY 11/21/2011
“Louise Shapiro is thoroughly beset in this thorny, lucid novel. Her bad luck begins in California, where her husband abandons his psychology practice and takes a job in a rural Michigan prison. Louise struggles to adjust to the heartland, which seems overpopulated with religious nuts and militia members. Her husband drifts away into a rebellious, gun-toting fugue, and the lover she takes becomes remote in his own way. Contributing to and reflecting her malaise is the ominous sociopolitical climate: the Oklahoma City bombing occurs midway, and throughout Louise grapples with the suddenly vivid awareness that the country is full of people whose worldviews are almost incomprehensibly different from her own. Her increasingly nuanced view of the sociopolitical divide is reflected in Pollack’s sensitive portrayals of both liberal Louise and her ilk, and their conservative counterparts. Weaving the personal with the political, Pollack (In the Mouth) creates an encompassing haze of dissatisfaction and misdirected passion. Despite the unrelenting misfortune, though, the tone is more solemn than dark; there’s a beautiful contemplativeness, and a believable sense of redemption in the end. Louise is jarred into a kind of awakening that might not have occurred in comfortable Berkeley, and is, if not happier, more enlightened for it.”
AMERICAN JEWISH LIBRARY REVIEW, Nov/Dec 2011
“When a client of Louise’s husband Richard commits suicide, the couple is plunged into a dark period. In an attempt to recover both professionally and maritally, they move to a small town in Michigan, just before the Oklahoma City bombing. In some ways, this move seems like it might bring this family together, but in other ways they are as far apart as ever. Can Louise and Richard figure out how to fight their personal demons and come together as a family again? There are many issues facing these characters and the way they deal with them is both complex and interesting. Pollack takes on many controversial and emotional issues in this novel about which readers are sure to have strong opinions, including intermarriage, cheating, and racism. The writing is very good and makes the book an easy read. This book could be really great for book club discussions. Readers will care for this family and root for them to succeed. This book is recommended for Jewish libraries and public libraries.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW) 11/15/2011
“An exploration of Tolstoy’s dictum about unhappy families.
Richard Shapiro, his wife Louise and daughter Molly are living the
good life in California when tragedy hits. Richard, a therapist, has a
patient who unexpectedly takes her life, and a short while later
Richard, still stunned by the suicide, accidentally sets a forest
afire on a camping trip to Colorado. In response to these woes, the
Shapiros decide to uproot themselves and begin a new life in southwest
Michigan. Richard takes a job as a Director of Psychological Services
at a local prison, but Louise, a social worker, has trouble finding
appropriate work in Stickney Springs. Although she eventually gets a
part-time position as a counselor at the local high school, she’s put
off by the politics (right-wing) of the locals, by their denial of
evolution and by their sympathy for militias and conspiracy theories.
Pollack sets her novel around the time of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of
the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and some of the locals
were known to have consorted with McVeigh—and they even show some
sympathy and support for him. While Richard’s status as a Jew makes
him a curiosity in this largely evangelical community, he finds
himself unaccountably drawn toward survivalist acquaintances. Louise
begins to grow apart from Richard, still haunted by his failure as a
therapist. As their emotional distance increases, Louise begins a
torrid affair and discovers that passion is a stern master—while it
makes her feel most alive, at the same time it tears her apart.
A rich and satisfying novel that explores in a significant way
contemporary issues of family, religion and politics.”
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