Boundaries

Roberta Silman’s first story was in The New Yorker; other stories followed there, in The Atlantic, Redbook, McCall’s, Hadassah, VQR, The American Scholar and in many places here and abroad. Her books are Blood Relations, stories; three novels, Boundaries, The Dream Dredger, and Beginning the World Again: A Novel of Los Alamos; and two children’s books, Somebody Else’s Child and The Astronomers.   Born in Brooklyn, brought up on Long Island, Silman graduated with honors from Cornell University and has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence.   A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, she has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction twice. Two stories were read on Selected Shorts, two others won PEN Syndicated Fiction prizes, and several were cited in Best American Short Stories. Somebody Else’s Child won the Child Study Association Award; Blood Relations won honorable mentions for the PEN Hemingway and Janet Heidinger Kafka Prizes; Boundaries won honorable mention for the Kafka Prize; and The Dream Dredger and Beginning the World Again won Washington Irving Awards. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, VQR, The American Scholar, and World Books PRI. She reviews regularly for the online magazine The ArtsFuse.   Ms. Silman is married to structural engineer, Robert Silman, and they have three married children and five grandchildren.

Are there really second chances? It is the 1970s and Mady Glazer is trying to hold herself and her three children together after the shocking death of her charismatic husband, David, in a plane crash. When they finally go on vacation to Racer’s Cove at the eastern end of Long Island, they meet Hans Panneman, a bachelor and potter, who was brought up in Africa, whose father was an avid Nazi, and who escaped his earlier life by settling here and leading the quietest of lives. They could not be more different, more representative of “the other,” as Mady is reminded by her extended Jewish family when she finds herself drawn to this quiet, puzzling man. Yet, love and ease sometimes come where we least expect them.