Main Line Times Jan 26   2006
By Bonnie Squires

 “Folks Who Veered Careers onto the Road not Taken”

The article makes the point that:

Eunice Miller is a well spoken marriage counselor and sex therapist who has degrees and certificates from Adelphi University, University of Pennsylvania, Temple University  and the Masters and  Johnson Reproductive Institute.

The article states that  “The Gals from ‘ Desperate Housewives’ could certainly use Eunice`s  advice.” offered  on the internet national radio show, she hosts, “Plain Wrapper” . The show features frank discussions with experts on topics like, “Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom”.

Alumni in the Field

Eunice Miller, MSW

You might have known her as Eunice Miller when she was your classmate in the social work program or when she was on the Alumni Curriculum Committee with you, but now she is known as the “Plain Wrapper”- the host of a national radio show that is on the VoiceAmerica network.

The show is about Seduction and Function.  It is about pioneering solutions for today’s sexual issues: the interplay of intimacy, sexuality, commitment and love.  With her expert and celebrity guests, psychologists, social workers, authors, audience call ins, and emails, Eunice explores what is new and what works.  Her guests say, “being on the show with Eunice is always fun.”  Her listeners, who are multiplying as the word gets out, say, “I learn something every time and bring it back for dinner table discussion.  Some of the topics are HOT so people pay attention to what I am reporting.”

How did an alumna from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work (the former name) train for this career?  In an interview at the Inn at Penn, Eunice shared her enthusiasm about her career path, and said, “Penn trains you not just for your first job, but for your job way down the road.  At Penn, I learned a way of understanding issues, whether in a person, a couple, a family, or in society.”  She recounted how her career path began when she worked at what was then the Philadelphia Department of Welfare.  There, she worked under the direction of Florence Silverblatt who was a Penn School of Social Work enthusiast.  She endorsed Eunice attending Penn under a Fellowship plan.

Eunice, now the mother of three grown daughters, laughs when she recalls how that job required her to work with foster mothers around the children in their care.  At that time, she knew nothing about the kind of effort it required to care for babies and she realized later that her expectations for people caring for five babies were totally unreasonable.

Eunice moved on to working with couples at Bucks County Family Service and started a family of her own three daughters in rapid succession.  She found, however, there was a hole in her training: the accepted idea was that if there was a sexual problem it was a reflection of a relationship problem, and so you work on that.  But as Eunice explains, “That’s like saying, ‘if your roof is leaking, call the electrician.’  I worked to fill in the gaps.  I did some training with Masters and Johnson, joined the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, and interned at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center.  I was able to balance family life with a career by being in private practice offering marriage, sex, and family therapy.  I also got involved in public issues.  I was appointed to the Governor’s Task Force on Divorce Reform and had the satisfaction of helping to get a No Fault Divorce Bill passed.”

Ruth Rovner, a local writer, dubbed Eunice “Dr. Sex” as she became known for some of her innovative ways of helping couples with their sexual issues.  She tackled female lack of desire by reframing it as women trying to have sex the same way as men, and finding their bodies didn’t work in the same way, leading them to withdraw from sexual activity.  She gave it the tongue in cheek diagnosis “Male Dominance Dysfunction.”

She used to be asked, “Does your husband know what you do?”  She now can happily answer, “Yes, he is one of my most devoted listeners.” 

To listen to Eunice Miller’s Plain Wrapper, tune into http://www.voiceamerica.com/.  The show is broadcast live on Thursdays at 1:00pm, and all shows can be heard on demand or at http://www.eunicemiller.com/.

Eunice invites alumni and students to suggest ideas for shows, be a guest, call in questions, or join her chat room about the shows or social issues.

Social Policy & Practice Hompage   |   Penn Homepage   |   Contact Alumni Relations

© The University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice

Book review: Lost in the Forest 

By Eunice Miller  
                
This is a book that gets it right.  Sue Miller Oprah’s “pick” and best selling author, is able to see the trees in the forest.  In Lost in the Forest, a family is meandering down life’s paths, seeking happiness, searching the world for “riches”, only to find “Acres of Diamonds” in their own back yard.

Miller writes about ordinary people dealing with life’s transitions. The ordinary people are the beautiful Eva, her first husband Mark, their two daughters, graceful Emily and awkward Daisy who live in the northern wine country of California. (Sorry it’s not the North Fork).  The story wraps around the event of the accidental death of Eva’s second husband, John.  This loss is the catalyst for revisiting the past.
 
Mark is an expert in growing grapes and managing vineyards: “All of them had read up on the valley…. what the differences were in temperature and rainfall from north to south, from hillside to valley, what kinds of grapes would be best suited to the land they’d purchased, and what they would need to do to those grapes to make them flourish”.

In parenting, however, and caring, Mark is unschooled. He is the boy/ father/husband who constantly disappoints his wife and his daughter, Daisy.  His leitmotif is scored by what earlier spiritual leaders called, “the evil impulse”, destructive sexual desire.  Eva and Mark had created a marriage, filled with sexual experimentation but devoid of intimacy and empathy. In their relationship, they could not produce a “cabernet”.   Daisy was the fragile grape and both her parents were not prepared to protect her.

Eva also found parenting overwhelming.  She was a personification of “The Feminine Mystique”. “Dishes always sat undone in the sink. The children’s projects…were always spread on the dining room table. …You couldn’t sit down without first having to pick up whatever child’s toy you might have sat on.”

Mark had “forgotten his love for Eva” and she was overwhelmed and exploded, “I just can’t do it”.  Eva was caught in the dichotomy of choice for women, go out to work and experience anxiety or stay at home and be enveloped by depression.
 
Mark copes by having an affair. (Too bad, he didn’t catch “The Lovers” at Sag Harbor Theater and learn a better solution is to have a tryst with your wife). Later, however, when Eva’s life improves, he confesses and seeks absolution from her.  Not knowing his wife, he is off the mark.   She is unforgiving and divorces him

Eva’s life rebounds as she finds comfort and intimacy with her second husband, John.  Her daughter, Daisy also benefits.  She looks upon John as her “real” father.  His sudden death destroys her equilibrium.

No one is there to help now fourteen-year-old Daisy, with her overwhelming feelings.  Mark is ill prepared and Eva is submerged in her own grief process.  Daisy observes that in adult meanderings, the children are “the collateral damage.”  Daisy copes by following her father’s pattern of engaging in an illicit relationship.  In this repetition compulsion, she plays the “other woman” with Duncan, the husband of family friend, Gracie.

Duncan and his victim, Daisy, treat us to torrid seduction scenes.  You might want to read these sequences alone, as they are convincing and emotional. (Hint: they are on pages 128-133).  There is a caveat. Miller in creating these scenes and through Daisy’s voice led us to believe that young girls have “power” in these situations.  In fact, sadly, it compounds their feelings of powerlessness as the men abandon them.

Miller does not let her people stay Lost in the Forest.  She ultimately underlines her belief that people in fact do have their own power and we join with Eva, Mark, Emily and Betsy as they connect to that power.  “Life is a cabernet”.

 In the end, Miller induces us to compare her story to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.  It is compelling to share Daisy’s summary as she prepares to play Shakespeare’s Miranda, “The creatures, the mankind: the people! That’s where she should put the emphasis, that’s what makes it new.”  Miller has done just that!

Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller, Published 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf, is available Borders Books and BookHampton.

Book review: The Sky’s the Limit Passion and Property in Manhattan by Steven Gaines

By Eunice Miller

Steven Gaines’ entertaining narrative, The Sky’s the Limit Passion and Property in Manhattan is a prequel and sequel to Age of Innocence.  It is a social history of old and new New York.  It is the tale of two sides of the city, the co-operatives and condominium buildings that reside there, the people that desire to sojourn in them and the masters over them. The “passion” is an expression of the drama of seduction, solicitation, acceptance and rejection. The main characters are the exclusive apartment buildings of East and Upper West Side Manhattan and their stories. Gaines has made the walls talk and we are all ears.

Anyone who lives in Manhattan knows the names of these buildings: 820 Fifth Ave, One Sutton Place South, San Remo, and The Dakota.  New York is peculiar in that it is the building that defines you more than the neighborhood.
 
The people, Gaines tells us about are the rich and the powerful who are part of the Manhattan triangle. These are the people who also inhabit, the Hamptons and Palm Beach.  The celebrities that we know are: Ralph Lauren, Jerry Seinfeld, Calvin Klein, Billy Joel, Steven Spielberg and Ronald Pearlman.  Gaines has a handy index so you can quickly check on their stories of acceptance and rejection.

The building that is first up, in this tale is 820 Fifth Avenue. “It is a vortex of desire in Manhattan…. a stately fortress of glistening gray limestone crowned with a modest copper cornice”.  Some of the most powerful people have lived here including Robert Goelet, who was the owner of land that became Rockefeller Center.  At 820 Fifth Ave. the arbitrator over whom to “accept” is Jayne Wrightsman, “the elegant, small boned rara avis of society”.

It was of great import that Tommy Hilfiger, a man in the “schemata” business, who created ghetto clothes that would have been prohibited from the closets of 820, was accepted. Gaines unwraps for us the machinations that Alice Mason; “the doyenne of all the carriage-trade brokers” went through to have this happen.  Unfortunately, Hilfiger had business reverses, got divorced and never occupied the $13.5 million, fourth floor, and apartment.

Do not be misled, Hilfiger’s acceptance did not mean that the rules of acceptance and standards were in abeyance.  Quite to the contrary, consistent with old New York, the co-ops are a world of rules.  Gaines cleverly weaves them into the fabric of his narrative.

Murder and suicide are against the rules.  Dogs can be a status symbol and welcomed, although there might be a restriction on height and weight.

Renovations are the word that sends shivers through the delicate Herrera clad inhabitants of the Beresford. The Beresford has a six-member board. Jerry Seinfeld bought an apartment there from, Isaac Stern in 1998 for $4.35 million and when a promised four-month renovation plan turned into two years, he was fined $500 a day. Subsequently, after Seinfeld purchased an adjoining apartment, the Beresford made tougher rules – all the work had to be completed in ninety days.

Gaines changes the pace and we empathize with the hard life of the Ansonia, built in 1904.  It was fathered by Will Stokes, a man who fantasized about young women and his dream hotel.  The Ansonia was compared to a “Parisian whore” and a “wedding cake”.  It was home to Opera star, Eleanor Steber, baseball player, Babe Ruth and then the Gay Continental Baths with entertainers such as Bette Midler appearing there.  Its final low point was reached when it was home to a Plato’s Retreat, a swingers’ hangout.  Ironically, earlier, Stokes hit his low when two showgirls shot him in the leg. Stokes recovered.  Later, so did the Ansonia. Jesse Krasnow, head of Lefferts Fore, the  “Salvation Army” of distressed buildings came to the rescue.  Recently an apartment sold for almost $ 4 million.

Gaines has succeeded in stirring our “passion” in a tale about  “property”.  The sky is the limit in enjoying this book!

The Sky’s the Limit Passion and Property in Manhattan by Steven Gaines, published 2005 by Little, Brown and Company is available at BookHampton and Borders Books.

Book review:  The Beach Book

By Eunice Miller

If you like swimming with the fish at Riverhead Aquarium and you don’t want your book to get ruined, this is for you. This handy little book, believe or not is entirely waterproof. 

 If you like to go to the beach and sit near the shoreline and a “hurricane by the name of Tess” hits you; don’t worry; this book will survive.

Although being waterproof is what is marketed, this little book is not “ all wet”. Inside its slick pages are reprinted  ten well-written, imaginative short stories by award winning authors. The common wave is “The Beach”.
                              
The authors project upon the sea fantasies dreams and fears. It is where little boys disappear on the back of giant turtles as recounted  in The Boy Who Talked with Animals by Roald Dahl.

The sea is also the place that coughs up dead people as told in the story, Handsomest Drowned Man in the World   by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 In ‘The Royal Palms”, Mathew Klam, a teacher  at Southampton Writers Conference, and inspired from his summers in Montauk, describes the beach this way: “The ocean was blue—deep brilliant turquoise—except that at noon, with the sun directly overhead, it turned the color of tin”.

Paralleling the different ways we perceive the ocean, this is a story about the changing nature of self-perception and relationships.

The main characters are Diane and her husband.    They meet Rick and his wife, Joanie on a vacation in the Caribbean. Joanie and Diane present as contrasting figures. Joanie is self-doubting .  Diane , an actress projects beauty and self-confidence.

Diane’s negative self-perception has led to her lack of sexual desire. After one romantic approach, Joanie rejects her husband, declaring,” My hair is filthy”.  In another episode this time with Joanie as the initiator, she cries out that she felt like a failure in every way.  Just when we feel the hopelessness in the situation, there is a stunning turn a round.  Diane goes windsurfing as has an epiphany.  With pride she describes how she got the windsurfer going, it was “tricky” but she went out into the ocean.  She exclaims, “she never had so much fun in her life”.  Ironically, she reports seeing a giant sea turtle, swimming along side of them, (there is no mention of a little boy on it).

Once Diane’s self confidence is  buoyed she is sexually energized.  Sex Researches  Masters and Johnson would be proud of her “Sensate focus” techniques:  The husband reports she, “kissed my throat…She held my head… ‘You’re the best lover in the world’, she said”.

There are other major surprises as you follow the story line of   the perfect couple, Rick and Joanie.  We will leave them now on the beach in the Caribbean but you can find them on “The Beach” in the Hamptons.

An epiphany also occurs in the insightful and engaging work,  The Ocean by Frederick Reiken.  This is the story of despair and hope narrated by a thirteen year old boy who has to cope with the loss of his mother, the possible death of his father, moral failures and his own developing sexuality. At first he sees the ocean as keeping us “connected to everything that is dead”.  We feel the deep connection to nature as Reiken competently describes marine life. Coincidentally, a sea turtle appears here, too and the narrator tells his girlfriend , Dara, “Lying in bed, I kept imagining us holding hands and following the turtle”.

“Following the turtle” and the stories in “ The Beach Book” looking at hopes and fears, the book is still life affirming as Reiken says, “I could go on with all the things that lived inside the ocean”. The  collection in this book  would fulfill the poet John Masefield’s  sentiments, “All I ask is a merry yarn”  Take this treasure of a book to the ocean,  read the stories with your families  and live and enjoy. 

The Beach Book Editor in Chief Duncan Bock, published 2005 by Melcher Media is available at Borders Books, Beachbooks and The Open Book.

Book review: Detour

 By Eunice Miller

“Imagine” sitting at a Seder in the Upper West Side and there is an Uncle Max there with his wife, Rachel both dressed in business casual.  Somewhere between the third and fourth cup of wine your imagination takes off and you decide to rescue him from his ordinary life as an adoption lawyer helping distressed childless couples that have exhausted all the fertility treatments.   You remember his comment that finding homes for needy children makes him feel like he was saving the world.  In fact, his motto is, “He who saves one child saves the world”.

James Siegel in Detour lifts Max from his ordinary life, renames him Miles, places him and Rachel in the black coated community of Williamsburg and creates a secret life for him that gets us up and running in this action filled psychological thriller.

Imagination doesn’t stop with Max.  Siegel seemingly lifts “ Dick and Jane” the children in primary readers, develops them as adults and renames them Paul and Joanna.

Miles name is not an accident.   Just like Detour it foreshadows, the long and twisted journey that takes Paul and Joanne from JFK to Bogotá, Columbia and back to New York.  The story comes to a dramatic turn around, at exit 71 of the Long Island Expressway.   Siegel knows this exit well from his twenty –five years of coming to Amagansett.

Miles sets up the couple to adopt a Columbian baby.  In this innocent pursuit, Paul and Joanne’s lives get embroiled with a lot of  “organizational men”.  There are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), a socialist militia that uses, terror, kidnapping and drug smuggling as tactics in their effort to overthrow the forces of the elite called the United Self Defense Forces.  Siegel introduces a bit of humor by falsely abbreviating the name to USDF, which just happens to stand for United States Dressage Federation.     .

The USDF, headed by a man named, Riojas, is equally ruthless in its efforts to protect the drug lords.  Torture, kidnapping and murder are its modis operendi.

There are other organizational men such as the Russians émigrés who call the Colombians “amateurs” and lastly the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).  As you follow the detour don’t speed read or you will miss the surprises and lose track of who are the good guys and who are the bad ones.

Now imagine this, the husband who doesn’t know where his wife keeps the ‘kitchen knives” and has never gotten around “ to fixing the squeaky drawers” must be transformed into the hero who fights all these terrorists elements and rescues his wife and adopted daughter.  It might sound like the story of Don Quixote; its not.  There are no laughs.   Similarly, to Maria, in the film “Maria Full of Grace”, the luckless Paul, in this traffic jam of a plot, is used as a mule to smuggle swallowed heroin.  The heroin is placed in condoms and can remain in a body only eighteen hours.   Any effort to sabotage the delivery results in death to the carrier or a kidnapped loved one. 

Is Detour a novel or a thriller?   John Updike makes the observation that modern thriller writers want to be “real novelists and to be free to follow characters where it takes them and to display their knowledge of the world without the obligation to provide a thrill in every chapter”.

Siegel takes the middle road.  There are certainly many moments of high excitement.  “Paul ran straight through the cattails…the ground wasn’t conducive to running for your life. …Behind him men were still screaming. They were still shooting too”.   However, there was not enough background information about the drug trafficking groups.  The reader’s research was needed as a bridge.  Thank you, Google.

Detour has scenes of life and death.  The author provides a philosophical theme.  We are reminded that in life we try to forget the bad but it still come around to haunt us.  Siegel changes his metaphor and comments in the last chapter.  “Sunday in June and the Central Park merry-go round was full”. Men and women climb aboard.

Detour by James Siegel, published 2005 by Warner Books, is available at East End Books.          

Book  Review: The Twins of Tribeca

By Eunice Miller

The Twins of Tribeca is a kiss and tell book. The romance starts with Karen Jacobs landing her dream job as a junior publicist at Glorious Pictures and the telling is what she observed and endured.  Of course as the book leaf records.  “This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination…” On the other hand the back of the book cover highlights, that the author, Rachel Pine, a Hampton affectionate  “is a former publicist for Miramax Films.”  At first, we admire her guts in writing this thinly veiled expose until we look for the name of the publisher and learn that it is none other than Miramax Books. That’s show biz!

In any case the reader is a voyeur to the back stabbing employees and the pampered stars that are the creative force in the movie business. Karen is a female Pangloss living in the “best of all possible worlds” and dutifully fulfills her obligations.
  
Ms Pine in her first novel has a real talent for satire and humor.  This is clear up front by the name of the studio, Glorious Pictures and goes on as we hear the name of the movie made “Perp Fiction” and those still unmade. They are “The Grave Digger” and         
 “Just What She Ordered Side of Fries Off the Menu.”

The recounting of the outrageous requests of the celebrities makes the book entertaining reading.  One such star is Sean Raines who is needed as part of the Los Angeles publicity campaign for the Academy Awards.  He demands that his plane tickets be hand delivered to him at his remote site in New Zealand. Instead of being dismissed as absurd, Karen is assigned the job of arranging this. She does this with aplomb.

Karen is a keen observer and she treats us to a cameo of the Big Boss, Phil Waxman (any similarity to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental). Karen walks in to Phil’s small office where he “completely dominated the space…”  “ He was eating an enormous omelet with his hands ... As Phil looked up at me a mushroom fell out of his mouth.” He utters,  “Leave it” This is as good as it gets for the communication at Glorious Pictures.

Interesting to me, this humble book reviewer, is our heroine Karen’s detailed and amusing account  of  the importance of acquiring reviews fresh off  the press She is instructed to go to the New York Times printing plant in Queens to get the Friday reviews, hoping for good quotes about the latest movie. (I am now having visions of Rachel Pine camping out at Dan’s Papers on Thursday to get this review). 

A story about the inside of the movie business wouldn’t be complete without a description about what goes on backstage that results in the Academy Awards. Ms. Pine doesn’t disappoint. Karen gives a full account. The stars know how to self promote. Ivan-Melissa the star of  “She Swings Both Ways”, “She lets it slip that she is dating Bob Metuchen, the director of the film, then although it was supposedly her character who swung both ways. She coyly suggested in the accompanying round of interviews that there was some real- life basis for her casting.”

Ms. Pine does let Karen have a touch of real romance. She slightly dates a gossip columnist, Elliott who seems to have a foot fetish. There is an amusing description of the under the table footsy that is going on. While discussing the office dynamics, Elliot is busy hooking his ankle with Karen`s. He pulled her foot to the edge of his chair and “had his hand around my ankle,” Karen recalls.

We learn at the end of the book that Elliot had more going on up his sleeve than he did under the table.  There is a surprise ending but it is no surprise that Karen discovers that Glorious Pictures is not the best of all possible worlds.  However, she still believes in leaping into the unknown.     

Ok Rachel, here is your quote, “It is time for your curtain call” you have delivered an amusing and entertaining performance. Bravo!

Twins of Tribeca by Rachel Pine, published by Miramax Books, is available at all local bookstores.

Book Review: Our Father’s War Growing up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation

By Eunice Miller

It is ironic that Tom Mathews, the son of  a father “ who hated war stories” has  spent his professional career writing about soldiers and war.  Perhaps, even more ironic in this compelling and insightful book, Our Fathers` War Growing up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation writes in detail about his father’s life, as a soldier, and  his struggle to fit into the normative life as a husband and a father.

The father, Lt. Thomas  Richard Mathews is laid out on the MRI of  the writer’s pages as  Mathews looks for his father`s heart. It seems to be missing in action. Mathews is determined to find it. Ironically, in order to find it and the connection and intimacy he longed for with his father he had to uncover the hearts of  ten other fathers and their sons.

The guiding question in Our Fathers’ War  is not What did you do during The War ?  but what did the war do to you?  A Prime Minister of  a strife ridden country often remarked that their adversary killing their young people was forgivable but having their sons having to kill  “them” that was the great tragedy.

Mathews, a Sag Harbor resident and an award winning journalist  at Newsweek starts his quest in the voice of  his two year old self , “Today’s the day, Tommy! Today’s the day!…My father and  I both have the same name, we are both first sons, alphas to the max and although I am still working on my milk teeth, sharing my mother with anyone bigger than me isn’t part of my master plan.”

Tommy  recalls his father,  who had served in the 10th  Mountain Division and had been sent to fight the Germans in northern Italy, as shouting to him from his perch on the roof  of  the “garage” to jump into is arms. To the small boy  the  drop appears to be like a leap into the bottom of  the Grand Canyon. “Certain death.” His father says, “Jump…I am your father.” Tommy “freezes to the roof.”  Tommy will always recall his father`s words “before he turned his back and walked away ,‘ No son of  mine is a coward ‘ ’’.

Tommy matures but continues to see his father as a soldier wanting “obedience and admiration.”  The rules are “don’t cry, don’t bitch and don’t bother me when I am busy.”  The son experiences this as “annihilation” The distance and ill feelings grows. The father’s feelings seem locked up, a prisoner of  war.
 
To free his father`s feelings, Mathews goes on a search and rescue mission. His troopers are fellow sons and their stories about their fathers` war experiences.
 
Each story culled from many Hampton residents are powerfully told with passion insight and empathy.

A standout is the story of  Sgt. Edgar Persan, BAR man, 100th Infantry Division, France. We meet him at Henry Persan and Sons’ Hardware.  He is a photograph on a shelf.  We see a “mud caked soldier leaning against the side of a deep foxhole during the Battle of  the Bulge…Somewhere on the far side of  the trees, the Germans were on the March and this guy was open for business.”  Closed, however, were his feelings, recalls his son ,Bob.

This yearning  of grown men to be close to their fathers  reverses the life cycle of  connection and separation.

Each story reveals the soul of  the American soldier always seeing  the enemy not as a sub human to be annihilated but as reflection of  himself. Thus, killing was intolerable so, to cope feelings were shut down.

 The author brings light into the shadow  and  shows us how to heal and take another look . Tom discovers that the “ garage” he thought his father  asked him to leap from was the roof of a small dog house. The lesson learned is that sons and fathers need to take a leap and trust the other will catch him.

Catch this book, it is the best written of the season. It solves the mystery of  the missing feelings.

Our Fathers` War Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation by Tom Mathews, published 2005 by Broadway Books, is available at Borders Books.

Book Review :   The Last Refuge
          

By Eunice Miller

The story begins with a foul odor and first time author, Chris Knopf mixes in a strong dash of foul language to create a riveting and pungent tale of who done it.  Mr. Knopf is an interesting mixture in himself. A partime resident in Southampton, he is described as a house designer, cabinetmaker, musician and award winning copywriter. This book, however, is not about house design or carpentry although both the run down house in Southampton and its inhabitant, Sam Acquillo could use a make over.

Ironically, Sam is made over from an organizational man to a drop out, loser. His losses are many.  He looses his marriage his daughter and his sense of purpose. Discovery the rotting body of his elderly neighbor Regina Broadhurst in her bathtub oddly propels him to revitalization.  He is not satisfied with a simple conclusion that she drowned. He has a hunch that some thing is putrid and it turns out it is the foulness of society’s values. 

Sam is appointed administrator of  Regina’s estate.  He takes this job seriously and this begins a tale that takes us up and down the familiar roads of the Hamptons. In the process  the book traffics in an ample supply of succinctly described characters

We have what Mr. Knopf calls the “summer people” and the regular folk. Then there  are  “ the wannabes.”   The summer people “weren’t all fops others thought a little money or the show of money bought immunity.”  Juxta supposed in the other corner representing the other guys is Joe Sullivan “almost a generic cop. Big in the gut and across the shoulders, liked to wear sunglasses, carried a Smith on his hip and a chip on his shoulder.”

I am not sure of the psychology of why the rich enjoy reading books that mock them. Thank goodness for  Mr. Knopf ‘s sake that they do. We have several juicy rich guys who go sour.  There is a motto that says, when in doubt “follow the money”,   Sam does and this leads him to a mysterious fund called Bay Side Holdings.  The fund was created to manage assets of  Carl Bollard Sr. who had been dead for over twenty years.

 If you follow this so far, good for you. It is hard to connect the dots but the bodies pile up. Our endomorphines don’t kick in because there is only minimum danger to our hero, Sam. Less you think that this is all about dead women and live men. It is not. There are complicated relationships resulting from liaisons with dullard Carl Bollard Jr.   We are not treated or burdened with an attempt to describe these trysts in any graphic terms.

There is a back and forth in the narrative as we learn about Sam the man and Sam the detective . He recalls the time he spent as a boxer,  “The fights I was able to win were usually on points. I never knocked anyone out, though I put a few into the canvas hard enough to get a decision. After a fight like that one of the trainers shoved my face into the  corner of the open locker hard enough to cut my lip.” This duality of theme  adds to the intensity  of  the book and gives it depth ,makes it compelling and thrusts us ever forward on the road to discovery.

OK now where were we?  No matter for it is all summed up for us in the end Perry Mason style.
 
If you are looking for a  Hollywood message that the punishment fits the crime,  you might find it here.

Mr. Knopf has gone back to a simpler style of the amateur  detective genre. He has created a mystery filled with imagination and relevant to the changes in the Hamptons where it  has become “almost impossible to live as a middle class wage earner.”

Ladies, buy this book for your man, tuck it in his computer case, his golf  bag, the captain’s table on his boat, his fishing tackle box or his lunch bag. The men will love you for it. .

The Last Refuge by Chris Knopf, published  2005 by The Permanent Press is available at East End Books

Book Review : Eli Wallach The Good The Bad and Me

Why you wrote the book. Who is the audience. You weave your marriage and children into stories about your work in the theater and film What was that like  really/ We think of actors and especially film actor as being far removed from normalcy.

Who were your friends and your real community? You seemed to play characters that were not like the person you are at home. How would you describe some of  the people you played in our favorite movies:  Davis Leland, How to Steal a Million, The General in Lord Jim,  Charley Gant in How the West was Won bandit, Calvera in The Magnificent Seven , Tuco the cunning in “The Good , The Bad and the Ugly” Guido in the Misfits.? Describe other characters that you played that meant something to you / Which ones are important to you  now?

In the “ Misfits” you worked with Arthur Miller, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe and John Houston, the Director. When did you see the movie last?  Let us tell the background and story of  the movie. When was it made, 1961. What was happening in your life at that time? How did you get the part? The story takes place in Reno , Marilyn is getting a divorce and Thelma Ritter plays her supportive friend. She meets the cowboys, played by Clark Gable, Gay and Guido the person you played . Somehow she is enticed to find a peaceful life in the bush and moves in with Gay. Guido is also very attracted to Marilyn’s character, Isabel.

What was so appealing about her , to the men in the story? They say “You are the saddest girl I ever met” “Yet you make men feel happy” Do you think that was true about Marilyn. What do you remember about how you felt when you were working with her? Did you interact with the cast off the set?

In the movie Isabel when asked about her mother, she recalls her mother wasn’t always there, this reflected her real life.  I guess Arthur Miller was asking Marilyn to use her own  life to play this Part?  Marilyn says, How do you trust someone who isn’t there all of  the time.? In “The Good , The Bad and Me” you recall your mother Bertha. Tell us about her? What memories do you have of  her cooking , rituals , house rules.  We all both copy and change the patterns we learned as children. What was the same in your wife’s Ann Jackson’s family and what was different? What did you copy from your parents in Parenting your children?

None of  the characters in the movie had a successful marriage or family. Yet you did and you had to connect to this life for the movie. As an actor how did  you do that?
It is interesting to see Marilyn Monroe’s body in this movie , I think today she would be called fat? The director  John Houston didn’t want us to miss the point of her body and there are several scenes with close ups of  her backside in full swaying motion.

There seemed to be a lot of  deep messages in the movie that Arthur Miller sums up in short phrases. Let talk about some of  his thoughts:

“ A little complaining helps sometime” 
“We all die not teaching each other what we really know”
“Maybe you shouldn’t believe what people say maybe it isn’t even fair to the people”
“ We kill people we never saw” You were in the army what was that like for you?
 
In the movie, Isabel is the person who shows empathy for what happens to everyone and for the animal as well. Their pain was her pain. Perhaps Arthur Miller was really describing Marilyn Monroe. Carrying all the world’s pain could be overwhelming.  In the movie she screams to your character that you misrepresented yourself  you needed to have self gain in everything that you did. Did you see Guido that way.? This was her last completed movie before her tragic death. Do you remember hearing about her death, How do you think we should remember her?

Of course, the Misfits was not your first movie. What was your first movie? ( baby doll) How did you get the part. Tell us about the story line and the character that you played, the director and the actors.

This movie had  a dramatic reaction from the religious community.  Tell us about that? Were you surprised. How did you handle it.?. How do you think it would be received today?

In “The Good The Bad and Me you tell your own coming of  age stories , your own early sexual history. I am sure our listeners would like to hear this from you as we have been asking them to e-mail their own stories. At eunicemiller@hotmail.com.

Of course, I must ask you to share your meeting Anne Jackson and your romance that you deliciously describe in The Good the Bad and me? Tell us about your family life and what impact your careers had on them?

What impact did your careers have on your children,

You have worked with the outstanding talent in the theater and film
I would like to mention the people you reference in your book and you can share your connection: and impression of  them:

Marlon Brando ( subletting apartment method actor)

Gregory Peck
 Henry Fonda
 Clint Eastwood
 Paul Newman
Directors John Houston
Elia Kazan ( the communist thing)

You have some insight what makes marriages work.
My listeners what to know what you think of movies today? What is your favorite movie that you have seen recently and Broadway play.

What has it been like talking to people and being interviewed about your book? Would you change anything about your book ? What is your life like now?

Your motto Make voyages , attempt them, there’s nothing else.

Book Review : 109 East Palace and The Secret City of  Los Alamos

By Eunice Miller

This is a book about “The Bomb”.   It should be read when the nights get cooler and you are around the fireside. Sag Harbor resident and author of  Tuxedo Park, Jennet Conant  seduces us into the story of the making of  the atomic bomb by personalizing the people that worked at Los Alamos during that historic time when World War II was “raging.”
 
We are familiar with the charismac world class scientist, Robert Oppenheimer who brings the scientists and their families together to Los Alamos to build in secret the atomic bomb that ultimately was dropped on  Japan ,ending the war and saving American lives.

Ms Conant ,however, wants us to know Dorothy McKibbin  a  widow who was recruited as the project’s “gatekeeper.” She is us, just ordinary brought by happenstance into perhaps the most world changing drama and historic events.  The author has a passion for us to know Dorothy. She describes her life in such detail that we could steal her identity.  However, the facts of her early life are mundane and the telling becomes wordy and tedious.  Dorothy living in Santa Fe was seeking employment when she meandered into the job working with  Oppenheimer. Her life changes when she says, “I’ll take the job.”  The time was March 1943 .   The war was heated up with “no end in sight.”
           
Los Alamos was a “slapdash settlement of muddy roads, unfinished labs and temporary quarters.”  There was however, the top facilities for research and employed there were more than 5000 scientists and  technicians. All of them with their families were processed into this pressure cooker community by Dorothy.

The continued warning almost like a mantra  to this secret community was” keep your mouth shut.”  Dorothy did this but she kept her eyes open.  She had hoped  to write a memoir, Ms Conant fulfilled  Dorothy’s wishes by using interviews, research and unpublished documents.

For Dorothy, it starts with her coming under the spell of Oppenheimer. She recounts, “It was something in his bearing…which gave the impression that he was hardly touching the ground.” Later, however, under McCarthyism  he was leveled with accusations that he was a communist sympathizer.

 It has been observed that even in the face of  conflict and war, people have a zest for life and try to create some normalcy. So it was at Los Alamos, there were, golf games, boisterous partying and of course, tennis. Yet ,there was collateral damage. Kitty, Oppenheimer`s wife became like many others an alcoholic. Their daughter hung herself. Ironically, Oppenheimer, the “Father  of  the Atomic Bomb”  needed help fathering his son, Kevin. Dorothy the lynch pin became his rescuer.

The dramatic climax comes  on Monday , August 6, 1945.
There is a news flash that Dorothy hears on her radio, President Harry Truman’s voice announces, “Sixteen hours ago and American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. The bomb had more power than 20,000 tons  of TNT…The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”
           
Although the story could have ended there, Ms Conant knows that the real story is the story after the “shock”.  She continues to use her powerful  skill in gathering the facts and dispensing them to the reader in the way that we are continually enthralled.

There is the recounting of  how our culture tends to tear down our heroes and such was the case with Oppenheimer .When accused by McCarthy of being a Communist sympathizer his close associate, Edward Teller testifies against him. Oppenheimer was stripped of  his security clearance. Loyal to him was James B. Conant who had joined Oppenheimer in a campaign against the hydrogen bomb.

The story comes full circle when we recall that James B. Conant is the author’s  grandfather.

So the survivor is Dorothy. Her last responsibility is to close the wrought iron gates in front of  109 East Palace. and to witness the dedication of the bronze plaque that says in part, “Their creation in 27 months of the weapons that ended World War II was one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time.”  Time will judge the legacy and as Ms Conent says understand, “the greatness and the folly”.

109 East Palace and the Secret City of Los Alamos  by Jennet Conant, published by Simon and Schuster 2005, is available at Oaktree Bookstores and all local bookstores.