Strangers and cousins, by Leah Hager Cohen

What might have been the straightforward story of a family wedding is complicated by several subplots and secrets.  Walter and Bennie are hosting the wedding of their oldest daughter, Clem, in a few days.  They live in an old, decaying family home in Rundle Junction.  Clem, half-Jewish, half WASP, is marrying her black college roommate, Diggs, so already gender and racial disparities are in play.  In addition, Rundle Junction itself is being polarized by the arrival of a new bunch of residents, ultra-Orthodox Jews who are building new homes with two kitchens.  Opposition to them is couched as an environmental impact fear (there’s a marsh) rather than anti-Semitism.  The three other Blumenthal children are as quirky as their oldest sister (who secretly is planning to turn the customary solemnity of a wedding into a performance art pageant).  Oh, and Bennie hasn’t revealed to anyone but Walter that, at 44, there’s a another bun in the oven.  As the story opens, Great Aunt Glad arrives – ancient and scarred by horrible burns sustained as a girl in an actual pageant in Rundle Junction that killed many local children.  It is clear as the story advances that she is dying.  Perhaps too many balls to keep in the air at once, but rather delightful.  320 pp.