| Category: | Fiction - Womens |
|---|---|
| Author: | Susen Edwards |
| Publisher: | Susen Edwards |
| Publication Date: | September 9, 2026 |
| Number of Pages: | 378 |
| ISBN-13: | 979-8994867402 |
| ASIN: | B0GX2Z38G5 |
Susen Edwards's Forgiveness opens on New
Year's Eve 2020, as seventy-year-old artist Fiona Goldberg marks the fiftieth
anniversary of the drunk-driving crash that killed her best friend Melissa, a
tragedy punished with a mere two-hundred-dollar fine. Fiona realizes she has
lived with undiagnosed PTSD for five decades. In 1969, she met Reuben Goldberg,
an anti-war activist whose Vietnam draft notice led the couple to Toronto in
1971. There, Fiona faced rejection from her mother and her subsequent death.
She had an affair with housemate Jerry, a secret abortion at the Margaret
Sanger Clinic, and a painful 1977 separation, before the lovers reunite and
marry in 1982. Now, Reuben suffers a tragedy at the January 6 Capitol, and
Fiona races to his Arlington hospital bedside. A confession on a train home
might make or destroy their lives.
Susen Edwards's spellbinding novel is deliberately paced, allowing
Fiona’s memories to unfold across a middle act spanning 1971–1977. This pacing choice
privileges reflection over momentum, but pays off when past and present
converge on the Acela. The worldbuilding is meticulously researched—from Mark
Satin's Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada and Carter's
Proclamation 4483 to COVID-era masking protocols and the ‘Hang Mike Pence”
chants of the January 6 Insurrection. Character work is spectacular. Fiona is
that insecure young woman who “never learned how to say no” and the
accomplished gallery owner masking her wounds behind a ‘fake it till you make
it” persona, silently carrying guilt over Jerry, her abortion, and her lost
family for fifty years. Reuben is equally layered: the principled idealist who
fled the draft is also the stubborn partner whose agenda-driven life helped
fracture their bond, and his concealed decades-long knowledge of Fiona’s secret
exposes a private guilt equal to hers. Through these interlocking timelines, Forgiveness examines
forgiveness not as a single act but as a lifelong practice—extended to parents,
lovers, and nations, but most crucially to oneself. It is, in turns,
heartwarming and resonant, and the superior storytelling makes the characters
and the tangled plot even more rewarding.
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