Family Drama

A vibrant debut and powerful meditation on family, motherhood, and the cost of holding on to your dreams, reminiscent of Ann Napolitano. In New England, Susan Bliss is a young mother married to a professor. In LA, Susan Byrne stars in a soap opera beloved coast to coast. Decades after she´s gone, her twins have no idea of their mother´s fame. But the past can´t stay hidden forever. It´s 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled seven-year-olds watch as their mother´s body is tipped overboard a crumbling boat. A Viking funeral, followed by a raucous wake. A send-off fit for soap opera star: Susan Bliss. Fifteen years earlier, Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. It´s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does--hopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susan´s two-paneled life: an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her life in New England as a wife and mother to young twins to the bright lights of Los Angeles, where she becomes the beloved star of a daytime soap. In the present, Susan´s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mother´s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother´s old costar Orson Grey--now a renowned Hollywood star--she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew. Sharp, assured, and beautifully written, Family Drama is a story told in double-helix, with intertwined timelines that explore the different versions of ourselves we share with the world and with each other.