Showing results by author "Méira Cook" in All Categories

The House on Sugarbush Road, set in post-apartheid Johannesburg shortly after the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela, is the story of the intertwining lives of a once prominent liberal Afrikaner family and Beauty Mapule, their domestic servant of more than 30 years. Cook's intimately interconnected and finely drawn characters are white, black, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, old, and young; they are also hustlers, do-gooders, petty criminals, and sensualists, heading towards dramatic explosions both inevitable and unexpected.

The Full Catastrophe is the story of Charlie Minkoff, a thirteen-year-old boy born with intersex traits, and his grandfather, Oscar, a ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor and Charlie’s best friend and confidante. Because the Nazis disrupted Oscar’s opportunity for a bar mitzvah, Charlie decides to right the historical wrong and arrange for a joint bar mitzvah for himself and his zeide.

After 20 years Max Binder is still in love with his fiery wife, Maggie, and is determined to get her the perfect fortieth birthday gift. But Max's singular desire - to make his wife happy - leads to an unexpected event that changes the course of his family's life and touches the people who make up their western prairie city. Set over the course of a single year, Once More With Feeling tells the story of a community through intersecting moments and interconnected lives. The colorful citizens who make up this city are marked by transformation, upheaval, and loss.