The Lost Legends of New Jersey

From the critically acclaimed author of The Odd Sea, a poignant and magical coming-of-age story that "deftly explores the mysteries of love and loss" (Time)

It's the early 1980s and the suburban streets of New Jersey are filled with Bruce Springsteen-era teenagers searching for answers. Anthony Rubin is a rising high school hockey star faced with a family that is falling apart. His father has had an affair with Anthony's best friend's mother and his own mother has abandoned the family for Florida. Confronted with an overwhelming sense of loss, Anthony focuses on the one thing he feels he can save-the tough-talking daughter of a reputed Mafioso, a Juliet to his Romeo. Merging the commonplace and the mythological, Frederick Reiken's richly layered second novel presents unforgettable characters whose lives seem at once familiar and archetypal. Filled with joy as well as heartbreak, The Lost Legends of New Jersey is a rich, resonant tale of the extraordinary magic that can arise within ordinary lives.

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A story of teenage life and love in suburban New Jersey chronicles the relationship between Anthony Rubin, a young Jewish teen whose own family is falling apart, and his neighbor, Juliette, the daughter of a reputed Mafioso.

Frederick Reiken holds a B.A. from Princeton and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine. His first novel, The Odd Sea, was chosen by Booklist as one of the 20 Best First Novels of the Year and won the Hackney Literary Award. He lives in Boston and teaches graduate writing classes at Emerson College.

Coming of age in 1970s New Jersey, teenager Anthony Rubin channels his energy into his hockey team rather than dwell on his absent mother or the seemingly uncontrollable (though not unmourned) loss of his best friend and next-door neighbor, Jay. An extramarital affair between Jay's mother and Anthony's father has caused tension between the two families, and as Jay drifts away, Anthony's tightly strung mother is sent into a tailspin, flight, and a strained, long-distance motherhood. To this emotional turmoil, Reiken, whose debut novel, The Odd Sea, won the Hackney Literary Award, adds Anthony's crush on the tough-talking daughter of the touted neighborhood Mafioso. A guy never had a more harrowing sophomore year. The author fashions a hero in resilient Anthony, to whom the reader's heart goes out with the clear understanding that it will be in good hands. Recommended for popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/00.] Margee Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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Elegiac and unsparingly direct, funny and poignant, this second novel by the author of the well-received The Odd Sea is a beautiful story about loss, hope and survival. Between the summer of 1979, when Anthony Rubin is 13, and the winter of 1983, when he is a hockey star in high school, he experiences the breakup of his parents' marriage, loses a close friend, falls in love several times and moves through adolescence with a mixture of yearning and rue. On the one hand, Anthony has grown up fast: his emotionally volatile mother, Jess, has a nervous breakdown because of his father's adultery and leaves the family home in Livingston, N.J., for Florida. Anthony has a sense that good things in his life are already a part of the past. He always sees the present moment at a distance, so he can capture and preserve it in memory. On the other hand, he is slow to mature; afraid of being rebuffed, he is shy with girls. Two astute and kind teenagers intuit his need for mothering. An "older woman" Alex Brody, the senior manager of the hockey team seduces him so he can lose his virginity, and his next door neighbor, Juliette diMiglio becomes his friend and sex partner. While all the characters are drawn with warmth, Juliette will haunt the reader. Her mother commits suicide; her crude, abusive father is regularly beat up by loan sharks; Juliette herself submits to her boyfriend's sadistic behavior and earns a reputation as a slut. Juliette is trapped in the circumstances of her life; Anthony will rise above them. But it is his grandfather, who at 81 meets his b'shert (a Yiddish word that means your fated spiritual other half), who teaches Anthony that he must wait for love. There are some wonderful, almost dreamlike set pieces in this novel, as when Anthony and friends discover a graveyard for musical instruments in the Meadowlands. If Reiken has a fault, it is endowing his characters with feelings that they immediately interpret into emotional insights. At times the psychologizing seems manipulated; too often characters get a mystical feeling that "something had shifted" inside, lifting them to a new stage of understanding. But these are small cavils in a narrative in which separation and loss are palpable, yet faith in survival is conveyed with a sweet but unsentimental clarity. Reiken's message is in a passage from the kabbala: even in the deepest sadness, one can find "sublime joy." (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.