Home Fires

By Donald Katz

Home Fires is the powerful saga of the Gordon family-real people, names unchanged. Spanning nearly five decades, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, their story has the scope, depth, wealth of incident, and emotional intensity of a great novel, and an abundance of humor, scandal, warmth, and trauma. A masterful chronicle of the turbulent postwar era, illuminating the interplay between private life and profound cultural changes.

Donald Katz begins his account in 1945, when Sam Gordon comes home from the war to his young wife, and two-year-old daughter, eager to move his family into the growing middle class. After a few years in the Bronx, Sam and Eve move to a new Long Island subdivision and have two more children. As the '50s yield to the '60s, the younger Gordons fly out into the culture like shrapnel from an artillery shell, each tracing a unique trajectory.

Katz tells the Gordons' story-the unraveling of Sam's and Eve's American dream, to the slow, hopeful reknitting of the family-marshaling a vivid cast of supporting characters. Deftly juxtaposing day-to-day family life with landmark public events, Katz creates a rich and revealing portrait of the second half of 20th century America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rare Bird Books
• Release date: May 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941729007

Reviews for Home Fires

[carterchristian1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

review is from: Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America (Paperback) It is amazing that the Gordon family permitted the author to share the intimate details of the lives of the four generations of this family. Anyone, especially those who have lived in New York or the various places the families have lived will compare their own experiences as they read along. Interfacing national events of the the time, popular books (I even remember reading Crack in the Picture Window in 1957) and music, plays and musicals of the times)with events of the families lives demonstrates how in fact we Americans have been so affected by these national and new technological trends as we have moved along. Today Facebook and social networks would be included as the difficult political times. My immediate reaction was to formulate in my own mind families of my few close friends as well as of course my own. In a way I guess in total extended families in the US are like this. The happy ending in Florida is really nice.