The Tenderest of Strings

Overview

In search of a new life, Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld and their two children move from Chicago to the small town of Welton, Colorado, looking for all the hope that the burgeoning West has to offer—its abundance of jobs, space, sunshine, prosperity, and the promise of reinvention. Reuben, a former copyeditor at the Chicago Tribune, purchases the local town paper, the Welton Sentinel. Ardith stays home and copes with the task of fixing up an older house, which suffers such disrepair that on Halloween it's mistaken for part of a haunted house tour. Teenaged Harry continues his life as a troubled loner, skipping school and losing his tooth in a mysterious encounter. Meanwhile, Reuben, unaware that Ardith is having an affair, worries about his wife's growing unhappiness and distance from the family. One night, after a cookout at some friends' dairy farm, a fatal hit-and-run occurs that shocks the community, exposes a secret, and begins to rip apart the Rosenfeld family. The Tenderest of Strings is a riveting, full-hearted story of what it takes to survive as a family in a small Western town that beckons from afar but will put its newcomers to the test of their lives.

Reviews

"What can we give up to save that which we cherish most? This is one of the questions posed by this absolutely gripping novel of a family on the verge of breaking apart. The characters here are as vivid and real as people we know in life . . . and just as captivating and mysterious. I was enthralled." —Ann Packer, author of The Dive From Clausen's Pier  

"We need more novels like The Tenderest of Strings, realistic but sympathetic depictions of ordinary men, women, and children trying to get through their days and nights with their dignity intact. Because Steven Schwartz's characters are people we are sure to care about, we're likely to turn this novel's pages as quickly as we would a thriller. But in The Tenderest of Strings we read to learn how the mysteries of the human heart will be resolved. This is a remarkable novel, wise, well-written, and evocative." —Larry Watson, author of Let Him Go  

"Fast-paced, unpredictable, and thoroughly absorbing, this is a beautiful and touching story of an American family, who, in a fractured, confusing world, try to remember how to be loyal, and how to love." —Ann Cummins, author of Yellow Cake  

"The acuity of Schwartz's gaze is matched only by the enormity and suppleness of his writerly heart. He is a maestro of the humane, a brilliant chronicler of the many barely forgivable ways we approach and avoid the mirror of our essential selves. The Tenderest Strings is at once a superbly compelling page-turner and a subtle, complex investigation—make that celebration—of the ties that bind." —Robert Cohen, author of Amateur Barbarians

"The smooth writing and quick pace will appeal to readers of Jessica Strawser and Jodi Picoult." —Carri Dubiel, reviewer for Booklist

Author Biography

Steven Schwartz is the author of the novels Therapy and A Good Doctor's Son and four collections of stories. His fiction has received the Colorado Book Award, the Nelson Algren Award, the Cohen Award from Ploughshares, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, and two O. Henry Prize Story Awards. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.