The story behind the bookJonathan WeinerWhat's it all about?The eternal question drives Jonathan Weiner, imbuing his writing with both a scientist's wonder and a poet's sensibility. The amazing patterns of life, the confluence of words on a page, both help create order in a chaotic world. "There's a lot that makes these two worlds, science and poetry, kindred homes," he says. And Weiner, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, "The Beak of the Finch," and a National Book Circle Award for his second, "Time, Life and Memory," has made the remarkable convergence come alive yet again in his most recent book, "His Brother's Keeper, A Story from the Edge of Medicine" (HarperCollins, $26.95 hardcover). The author, whose father is an academic scientist and an emeritus professor at Brown University, came to science writing after struggling with what he saw as the inherent conflict between science and art. Aspiring to be either a biologist or a writer, he opted for writing poetry. After four tortuous years at Harvard pursuing the muse, he graduated and began writing "about everything under the sun." A science magazine picked up an essay he wrote about biology. The light went on. "I realized (science and writing) were similar quests." "His Brother's Keeper," featured at the JCC book fair, tells the story of the Heywood brothers - Stephen, diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, at age 29, and Jamie, an engineer working for a scientific research group, who is committed to saving him. Against the backdrop of budding scientific advance in gene therapy and regenerative medicine, Weiner captures the strength of a family confronted with debilitating illness and the bond between brothers that impels Jamie in his heroic search for a cure. What makes the book more compelling is the inclusion of a parallel drama playing out in Weiner's personal life at the same time he was researching the Heywoods' inspiring story. Weiner's mother, a social, active woman in her early 70s, began exhibiting a bizarre combination of symptoms that hinted at a rare degenerative nerve disease similar to ALS. "It was horrifying," he says of his mother's frightening decline. The two stories "became mixed up in my head" as he shuttled from his home just outside Philadelphia to Boston, where the Heywoods resided, to Providence to see his mother. He wrestled with including his mother's story in the book. He worried about injecting himself into the story. "It felt risky to me, partly because I write about science and try to be objective," he says. And he worried about inflicting undue pain on his family. "For me, it became a necessary step to talk about our story; for my father it was not. He is from another generation and for him these were private matters." Ultimately, Weiner followed his instincts, and his father "had the good grace to encourage me." Weiner says he wrote about his mother because he needed to. "It was the biggest thing going on in my life then; I almost felt as if I did not have a choice." Too, he felt that it was important to raise the issues publicly. "It's important for our society to understand that there is nothing shameful in illness," he says. "And I wanted to offer some solace to other people who are finding their way into a family story like that." Weiner says writing the book has helped him regain a sense of wholeness in his life. "It closes the circle," he says, recalling the dislocation he experienced at the onset of his mother's illness. "My sense of life remains intact, the ability to live and help those you love," says Weiner, married to children's book writer Deborah Heiligman and the father of teenage sons. "Life is amazing, wonderful, and if readers come away with that core text then I've done my job." Susan IsaacsSusan Isaacs is on the phone.The fast-talking girl from Flatbush with a New York accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. The mistress of the quick quip, the sharp snipe, the Long Island housewife who not only made good, but made millions, making us laugh with her blockbuster novels chockablock with larger than life characters and matching angst. That Susan Isaacs. She'll be the featured speaker at the Chai Tea at the JCC book fair, 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus. Her 10th book, "Any Place I Hang My Hat" (Scribner, $26 hardcover) was published last month. Isaacs grew up in Flatbush, an only child of a middle-class Jewish family. "It was a nice place to grow up," she remembers of her childhood in Brooklyn in the late 1940s and early 1950s. "My mother stayed home, and my dad went to work." But her mother was ill, so often Grandma Rosie, her paternal grandmother, took charge. "She taught me about Jewish women," says Isaacs. "The kind of people who give Jewish mothers a good name," she says, suggesting darkly that there is another kind. Grandma Rosie emigrated from her native Hungary as a child. She grew up, got a job working in a factory and married. But the marriage soured - Isaacs infers it was an abusive relationship - and grandma decided she wanted out. "You would think in those days Grandma Rosie would take it. But she got herself a nice young lawyer, got a divorce and went back to work in the factory to support herself and my father." Strong stock, Isaacs suggests proudly. She followed a more traditional path, graduating from Queens College and landing a job as an editorial assistant at Seventeen. She married Elkan Abramowitz, then a federal prosecutor, now a criminal defense lawyer, in 1968, progressed to senior editor and promptly quit when her first child, Andrew, was born in 1970. Three years later she gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth, and worked as a free-lance speech and magazine writer. As Isaacs tells it, she had always been an avid reader and was then devouring about three or four mysteries a week. "And this housewife entered my head, and she very much wanted me to tell her story." That, of course, was Judith Singer, housewife turned amateur detective who is drawn to investigate the murder of a local dentist in "Compromising Positions." It was Isaacs' first novel and went on to be a smash box office hit of the same name in 1985. Singer resurfaced in Isaac's ninth novel, "Long Time No See," published in 2001, now as a widowed mother of adult children with a doctorate and a teaching job, reflecting the vast changes in the social landscape. Isaacs says that all her books begin with a character "who just comes to me and says 'write my story.'" She researches her books but has learned to incorporate what she uncovers seamlessly. "You should never let your research show," she says. Many of the characters in her books are Jewish women and Jewish references abound. "I am who I am," says Isaacs. "I never worried as a writer whether something will play in Peoria or Peoria will get it or not." Her books are published in 30 languages, attesting to their universal appeal. Her latest jumps the generational divide with protagonist Amy Lincoln, a 20-something Harvard B.A., Columbia School of Journalism M.A., who is working in Manhattan for In Depth, a news magazine. An assignment tracking the illegitimate child of a prominent politician sparks a desire to find her long-lost mother and a search for her identity ensues. Isaacs says this generation often is bereft and unmoored. "We are so economically and geographically mobile that we sometimes are not in touch with where we come from," she observes. "This generation has to figure out who they are," she says. And where to hang their hats. While Isaacs goes for the humor, she says that over the years she has found that her books often help people process their own experiences. Her mail reflects their impact. "My books are not (how-to) guides," she says. "But they help readers see what is going on in their lives with more clarity." Jane HellerWanna make Jane Heller happy?Smile. Giggle. Guffaw. "I want to take readers away from the daily grind and make them laugh," says the affable Heller from her Beverly Hills office. "Life is so hard today - on a personal level, a professional level - we all need a break." Heller takes aim at contemporary foibles - work, romance, family - with incisive wit and humor. Her writing is smart and snappy, her outlook on life upbeat and uplifting without being sappy. "I'm a big one for happy endings," says Heller, recalling wistfully the final scene in the movie "The Way We Were" when Barbra Streisand is running her hand through Robert Redford's hair. Heller, no matter how many times she has seen the movie, is still hoping they will get back together. Her books, she says, have a beginning, a middle and an end. She likes writing because she likes to be in control. But real life is messy, as Heller well knows. She grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., one of six siblings in a blended family. She was 6 when her father died, 9 when her mother married a widower with four children. "My stepfather was a wonderful man," she says. "But stepfamilies are not 'Leave it to Beaver.'" She majored in Greek and Latin at the University of Rochester, going on to pursue a master's degree at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. After a year, she headed to New York, intent on becoming a sportscaster. It was the early 1970s. She interviewed with the major networks - and was offered an administrative position. "I said in my huffy way, 'I did not go to graduate school to be a secretary.'" Heller landed an entry-level job at a major publishing house and spent the next 10 years climbing the corporate ladder and promoting other writers. "I loved publishing, I had a wonderful job." But the business side did not have the same appeal and gradually Heller says she decided to leave. "I felt bored, I was missing the creative end." Her first marriage was breaking up, and Heller was asking herself, "What do you want to do?" She started writing a book. "Little by little I got into it," she says, even now somewhat incredulously. "And the next thing I knew, I had 200 pages." That became her first novel, "Cha, Cha, Cha." Her 11th book, "Best Enemies" (St. Martin's Press, $24.95 hardcover) came out last year. It deals with the longtime friendship of two young women that explodes after one betrays the other. All of her novels have that "omigod" quality - this could happen to me - and a common theme of relationships in our lives. "There is a message in these books," she says. "Deep relationships - mothers and daughters, sisters, best friends, husbands and wives - often do not go smoothly but we have to find a way back and learn to put them back together."
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