About this item
Highlights
- Three daughters of a famed and eccentric puppeteer must confront their family divisions and tenuous relationships with their father and each other when, sinking into dementia, he announces there is a fourth daughter in this powerful story of family, ambition, and legacy.
- Author(s): Heather Newton
- 304 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
"At his 80th birthday party, renowned puppeteer Walter Gray surprises his three daughters with an announcement that there is a fourth. A torn paternity test, and a will that places a condition on each daughter's inheritance, suggest that the missing daughter isn't a figment of his dementia. His daughters-by different mothers-react differently to the news. Jane, the oldest, remembers the scarcity of her childhood and doesn't want another sister to share her birthright. The middle sister, Rosie, born out of wedlock, sees the missing sister as her key to acceptance as a full member of the puppeteer's family. Cora, the youngest, born after Walter achieved fame and fortune, is most concerned with extricating herself from running Walter's company so that she can pursue her own innovative puppetry. In searching for the fourth daughter and struggling to claim the legacy Walter has left them, the sisters must confront and renegotiate their relationships with their father and each other. Infused with fairy tales that sometimes spill magic into the sisters' real lives, The Puppeteers Daughters is about fathers and daughters, but also about the cost and rewards of claiming a creative life"--Book Synopsis
Three daughters of a famed and eccentric puppeteer must confront their family divisions and tenuous relationships with their father and each other when, sinking into dementia, he announces there is a fourth daughter in this powerful story of family, ambition, and legacy.Review Quotes
"A complicated father-daughter story that fulfills its promise. Fans of Tara Conklin's The Last Romantics and Melissa Scholes Young's The Hive will love this." -Library Journal"Heather Newton has written a tender family saga with gorgeous prose, a lot of heart, some big secrets, and a little bit of magic." --Sarah McCraw Crow, author of The Wrong Kind of Woman"With this mix of traditional fairy tales, offbeat original scripts, insights into the world of puppetry, a touch of King Lear, and the basic personality of a romcom, The Puppeteer's Daughters is a charming read with some unexpected thoughtfulness between the lines." --New York Journal of Books
"An aging, celebrated puppeteer throws his daughters' lives into chaos in Heather Newton's gripping new novel . . . A heartwarming story about self-acceptance, forgiveness, and the strings sometimes attached to family love." --Foreword Reviews
"The Puppeteer's Daughters by Heather Newton masterfully captures the tenderness and tension between sisters . . . Newton employs a light touch with this enchanting tale of memory, myth, and magic, as each of The Puppeteer's Daughters begins to untangle her complicated family legacy." --Kim Wright, author of The Canterbury Sisters and Last Ride to Graceland
"Beautifully rooted in classic fairy tales, and rich with the intricacies of the puppeteer's art, Heather Newton's novel animates the lives of three complex women." --Laura Kalpakian, author of Memory into Memoir and These Latter Days
"Heartfelt, intriguing and breathtakingly creative. The Puppeteer's Daughters proves that happily-ever-afters aren't always the ending to fairytales--sometimes they're just the beginning. Heather Newton is a born storyteller, showing us that magic can spill into our everyday lives when we step out of our comfort zones." --Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spells and Other Birds
"Perfectly plotted, wonderfully paced, with characters I loved and rooted for page after page." --Tessa Fontaine, author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts