What Family Means-Geri Krotow

What Family Means
Geri Krotow
Harlequin SuperRomance, Feb 2009, $5.50
ISBN: 9780373715473

In Buffalo, New York, Will and Debra Bradley have been married for thirty-five years. However, their interracial marriage has had some conflict lately over their role in the lives of their adult children. Will believes Debra is too involved while she feels he is too removed as their offspring need them because it is not easy being mixed race.

Debra looks back to when they first started to fall in love and what they went through even in Upstate New York. She also helps her daughter Angie cope with an unexpected pregnancy at a time when her child is separated from her spouse and takes care of Will's elderly mother without complaint. Will her husband finally understand his wife does what she does because she loves her extended family and is not motivated by guilt.

This timely family drama is at its best when it focuses on the problems of interracial couples and their children; when the tale flashes back to the early days of the relationship between Will and Debra it loses some of the momentum though it does provide insight into race in America in the 1970s. The characters and their problems seem real as Geri Krotow provides a timely thoughtful contemporary as the offspring of a mixed couple enterers the White House.

Harriet Klausner