The First Desire Book

When Sadie sees her brother Irving nervously shifting about on her front lawn, she knows that something's wrong. Goldie, their eldest sister, has vanished without a trace, leaving everyone stunned. What begins as a family mystery becomes something deeper still: a dazzling portrait of the Cohen family and a moving story of American small-city life, spanning years from 1929 to late 1940s. Told in a seamless wave of perspectives, the story documents the lives of the reliable and seemingly invulnerable Sadie, her over-sexed sister Joe, and their brother Irving, whose secrets - and fears - cause him to court disaster.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

The First Desire is both lovely and heartbreaking in its vision of family ties at their most inevitable. "She has on this earth one mother," the book says of Lillian and her punishing parent, "a mother she wishes to forget, whose love is the color of bruises and who will, if you ignore her, haunt you into the next world." Ms. Reisman's power to haunt does not stretch quite that far, but it is formidable. It extends from the anxiety and uncertainty of loss, through the everyday wear and tear of family friction, to the reaffirmation of coming home.