SHELFAWARENESS.COM — Julia Jenkins: Review, A Distant Heartbeat
“…a precise, elegiac journey through history, family tensions and human drama.”
JEWISHCURRENTS.ORG — Marissa Piesman: “Among Young Communists in the Bronx”
“I will willingly read any book in which “YCL” (Young Communists League) and “Tremont Avenue” appear in the same sentence — and Eunice Lipton’s family memoir was a true pleasure. Lipton has created a nuanced portrait of a conventionally meshugene immigrant family living in the South Bronx (formerly known as the Bronx).”
PATRICKTREARDON.COM — Pat Reardon: Review, A Distant Heartbeat
“In the jagged, inscrutable ways of families, Eunice Lipton’s A Distant Heartbeat is a love story. It is a love story that encompasses affection, loss, flight, innocence, competition, anger, sex, idealism, arrogance, fear, courage, longing, martyrdom and betrayal.”
From KIRKUS REVIEWS — “Lipton … had always known that her father, Louis, had singled her out as his favorite and the one who would bear the memories of his younger brother, Dave…. [who] “could have gone almost anywhere” but who decided to dedicate himself to leftist politics and a conflict—the Spanish Civil War—that eventually killed him.… She was confronted with Louis’ inexplicable rage over letters that Dave had sent home from Spain…. Lipton began to [do] research… [She] unearthed the names of fellow soldiers who knew Dave and attested to his “gentleness and commitment….” She also learned …[about those] who chose to fight for Spain: passion drove them, but so did a burning desire to “[b]ecome part of something” greater than themselves. Their stories and testimonials allowed Lipton to imagine her uncle, his world, and her father and eventually uncover a bitter family truth…. The abiding love [Lipton] reveals for the uncle she never met is heartfelt…. Well-researched and often stirring.”
AMAZON.COM — Caroline Brothers: ” Behind the great movements of history lie myriad tiny decisions…”
“In delving into the intimate corners of her family’s relationships, Lipton masterfully unravels a story of a betrayal, of loss and bitter regret and sorrow, that brings the uncle she never knew flickeringly to life for us almost as quickly as he is lost.”–CAROLINE BROTHERS, novelist (Hinterland), and journalist
AMAZON.COM –Alicia Ostriker: “Idealism vs. Cynicism”
“This book is a page turner. The tragedy of two brothers locked in love and betrayal, set within the larger tragedy overtaking Europe in the middle of last century. Lipton is a passionate investigator of human motives, those of her uncle and those of her father–and in the drama of idealism and cynicism, the reverberations go on and on.”–ALICIA OSTRIKER, poet, author, two-time National Book Award Finalist
AMAZON.COM — Susan Silas: “A Distant Heartbeat by Eunice Lipton is a bit like an archaeological dig…”
“…eerily timely, because we think so often in the current political climate about what it means to die for an idea; to put ones life forward for a political or religious goal.”–SUSAN SILAS, artist, critic, and writer (hyperallergic.com and NYTimes)