Family Value

The Marshes and the DiDonatos live in a Cambridge, Massachusetts two-family house and struggle with the usual problems of a modern life.
Tony DiDonato can’t find a job as a professor of medieval literature so he refurbishes salvaged trash to sell at flea markets and acts as house husband.
Laurel DiDonato, a safety engineer, discovers her company is breaking the law with dangerous chemicals. The breadwinner of her family, she has to decide whether to risk her job or let the matter ride and endanger others. More than anything she wants to find her birth mother.
Jay Marsh is a lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work. He is passionate about helping others, something he learned from his adopted artist mother, but he also needs to make peace with his adopted father, a successful Harvard law professor who is dying. His perceptions of his father’s desertion need to be brought in line with reality.
Carol Marsh is a probation officer working with kids. She loves her work but is still struggling to come to terms with her late mother’s alcoholism. Living in her childhood home doesn’t help, and the matter is made worse when Jay decides he wants to clean out the basement, where Carol discovers secrets that will bring major changes to the family. She also does not realize that one of her juveniles is part of a racist militia that will threaten her family.
As these four adults struggle with their problems, they also learn the value of family and friends.

Released on: 16/04/2010

ISBN-13: 978-1594148736

ISBN-10: 1594148732

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“Nelson has painted a sympathetic portrait of families with problems and issues … her keen eye for detail makes this novel a richly textured, realistic view of the modern American family.”

The house at 392 Chestnut Street is a duplex occupied by the DiDonatos and the Marshes. Life isn’t perfect for either family. Jay Marsh, an attorney, is dealing with his dying, estranged adoptive father. Jay’s wife, Carol, a probation officer working with juvenile offenders, oversees a kid who has become a neo-Nazi, and Carol’s whole family is put in harm’s way. Tony DiDonato, an unemployed college professor, has turned to salvaging and refurbishing furniture. His wife, Laura, a safety engineer, has found out that her company’s dangerous chemicals violate the law, but if she turns the company in, she’ll lose her much-needed job. Nelson has painted a sympathetic portrait of families with problems and issues—many of them major. Her keen eye for detail makes this novel a richly textured, realistic view of the modern American family.