36

"Unfolds like a legend, a spiritual origin story we may have dreamt or perhaps already lived." Anthony D'Aries, author of The Language of Men It is the summer of 1984. Ronald Reagan is in the White House, the cellphone has yet to be invented, and the Weiss family operates like a well-oiled, three-ring circus. At its center is Maxine-middle-aged, tireless, and in control-the ringleader who keeps everything in motion. She juggles the needs of everyone around her: a mother newly moved into the in-law apartment of her three-story home, a husband in need of new knees, and an ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances who rely on her via a telephone that tethers her to the house with impossibly long cords. Above all, she cares for her most important responsibility-her intellectually challenged daughter, Shira, an innocent with a sweet disposition that leaves her vulnerable in a cruel world. Maxine keeps all the plates spinning, certain that if one should fall, her eldest daughter, Shellie, will be there to catch it. But when Shellie returns home, she comes with a mission of her own: to break her mother's heart. Set against an ancient Talmudic legend of thirty-six people responsible for the survival of humankind, 36 is a powerful story of obligation versus choice-of embracing one's destiny or daring to escape it.