by Bill Broder (Author)
From Donna Seaman's review in The Chicago Tribune "Broder's Taking Care of Cleo is a cleverly disarming mix of psychological realism, romance and comedy... Broder combines a storyteller's delight in complicated predicaments with a painter's eye for landscape and body language, and a poet's sense of place... The setting he so lushly evokes is Charlevoix, Mich., a small Lake Michigan resort town. It's 1928, the height of Prohibition, and Charlevoix is the site of a turf war between bootleggers, a dangerous situation The Bearwalds are the only Jewish family in town, owners of the local dry goods store. Cleo, the elder daughter, is a beautiful, autistic twenty-year-old] Broder renders the emotional turmoil experienced by each of the Bearwalds with insight as their lives implode (due to Cleo's involvement in bootlegging). His portrait of Cleo, the source of the novel's radiance, is particularly arresting. As Cleo proves that she can live her own life . . . Ultimately Broder's sparkling, suspenseful and compassionate comedy of errors deftly reveals the complex symbiotic relationship between caregivers and the cared for . . ."
Author Biography
BILL BRODER has published nine books of fiction: The Sacred Hoop, Sierra Club Books; Remember This Time, written with his wife, Gloria Kurian Broder, Newmarket Press; Taking Care of Cleo, Handsel Books/ Other Press; and the following books by The Ainslie Street Project: The Thanksgiving Trilogy, including Crimes of Innocence, Esau's Mountain, and What Rough Beast?; Two Russian Bicycles, consisting of two novellas, Tolstoy's Wife and The Sphinx of Kiev; Belief, A Novel; and The Teeth of God. He has published one book of nonfiction: A Prayer for the Departed, The Ainslie Street Project. Broder has also acted as member, executive director, and artistic director of a playwrights' workshop, California On Stage, and has completed a number of full-length plays, which have received staged readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of his plays were presented as staged readings at The Second and Third Annual California Studies Conference in Sacramento, California. His play Abalone! was produced in Carmel, California. Throughout his free-lance writing career, he has worked with publishers and exhibit designers to create materials for educational institutions.