Publisher Description
When a man discovers his father in New York has long had another, secret, family, the interlocking fates of both families lead to surprise loyalties, love triangles, and a reservoir of inner strength.
Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family—a Thai wife and two kids living in Queens. In the aftermath of this revelation, Ethan’s mother spends a year working abroad, returning much changed, as events introduce her to the other wife.
Across town, Ethan’s half brothers are caught in their own complicated journeys: one brother’s penchant for minor delinquency has escalated, and the other must travel to Bangkok to bail him out, while the bargains their mother has struck about love and money continue to shape their lives.
As Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to encompass a woman rallying to help an ill brother with an unreliable lover and a filmmaker with a girlhood spent in Nepal.
Ranging over three continents, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand to forge their own forms of joy.
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“Dissects, with stunning precision, a family’s physiognomy as revelations of a father’s secret life force the survivors to revisit their own beliefs about themselves and each other.”
—
O, The Oprah Magazine
About Joan Silber
Joan Silber is the author of the story collection Fools, which was long-listed for the National Book Award and nominated for the PEN/Faulker Award. Her first novel, Household Words, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. She has published five other books of fiction, including Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Size of the World, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction and one of the Seattle Times’ 10 Best Books of Fiction. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Agni, Ploughshares, Boulevard, and Epoch, among other publications.
About the Narrators
Mia Barron has worked at theaters in New York and around the country. Her film and television credits include The Guiding Light and the independent feature The F Word. She has won an AudioFile Earphones Award, and in 2003 she was awarded the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award for her audiobook narration.
Andrea Gallo is an audiobook narrator whose works include Ungifted by Gordan Korman, The Nosy Neighbor by Fern Michaels, Kings of the Earth by John Clinch, and In Search of Eden by Linda Nichols, among many others.
Pete Simonelli is a writer, audiobook narrator, and vocalist for the band Enablers.
Greg Watanabe is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
Graham Winton is a television, film, and voice actor who has won the Audie Award for Best Narration. He has appeared on such television shows as Blue Bloods, Law & Order, All My Children, and As the World Turns.
Robin Eller is a narrator, actress, singer, and dance educator. She has appeared on stage, in films, and on such television programs as The Bernie Mac Show, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless, and General Hospital, as well as numerous commercials. As a dancer, she has traveled the world with the legendary James Brown.