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The Year of the Return
Set against the backdrop of 1976 Philadelphia, The Year of the Return follows the path of two families, the Jewish Silks and African American Johnsons, as they are first united by marriage and then by grief, turmoil, and the difficult task of trying to live in an America failing to live up to its ideals.
Paul Silk and Charlene Johnson are journalists whose love for each other and commitment to social justice were formed in the peace movements of the 1960s. But the idealism of that era leads to the urban deterioration of the 1970s. Mayor Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia is a place of crime, white flight, and class resentment that is inhospitable to their interracial marriage, forcing them to move away. But when Charlene dies of cancer, Paul returns.
Unmoored and unable to let go of Charlene, he wades back into the lives of the two families, with the hope of helping Charlene's younger brother Monte, once a prodigy and now a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. Their explosive reunion leads to the baring of personal revelations and dangerous secrets.
The Year of the Return is a vivid story of families trying to reconnect with and support each other through trauma and loss, and a meditation on the possibility of moving on to a better future.
Paul Silk and Charlene Johnson are journalists whose love for each other and commitment to social justice were formed in the peace movements of the 1960s. But the idealism of that era leads to the urban deterioration of the 1970s. Mayor Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia is a place of crime, white flight, and class resentment that is inhospitable to their interracial marriage, forcing them to move away. But when Charlene dies of cancer, Paul returns.
Unmoored and unable to let go of Charlene, he wades back into the lives of the two families, with the hope of helping Charlene's younger brother Monte, once a prodigy and now a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. Their explosive reunion leads to the baring of personal revelations and dangerous secrets.
The Year of the Return is a vivid story of families trying to reconnect with and support each other through trauma and loss, and a meditation on the possibility of moving on to a better future.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
ebook
Published August 1, 2019
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30 people want to read
About the author
Nathaniel Popkin
9 books17 followersPartly Strong, Partly Broken is Nathaniel Popkin’s fourth novel and eighth book. He is also the co-editor of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? In the novels The Year of the Return and Everything Is Borrowed and in the book-length essay To Reach the Spring, Popkin examines intersections of Jewish ideals and lived realities. Popkin is a writer and producer of history documentary films, the co-founder of the website and public history and journalism project Hidden City, and formerly a writer of criticism for the Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, Public Books, and Cleaver Magazine, among other publications. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Tablet, and Gulf Coast.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 2, 2024
This story takes place in 1976 showcasing the Bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia. It centers upon an interracial married couple, Jewish Paul Silk and African American Charlene Johnson. They were both journalists that fled Philadelphia for Colorado because of the racial blowback they received about their relationship, as well as the corrupt Mayor Rizzo. After Charlene's tragic death from cancer, Paul returns to Philly to live with his parents and return to a job in journalism.
The strongest point of this book is the loving/supportive/respectful nature between the Silk and Johnson families that endured after Charlene's death. When the story focused on the families it was more relatable and engaging. However, there were a lot of family members to keep track of and since they traded off narrating chapters it sometimes became confusing. In fact, there was a legend at the beginning of the book outlining each character. When the storyline waded into the Silk Industries family business/clothing mill, this ushered in a cloak of darkness and corruption. I became a bit lost and detached following the business turmoil, as well as some of the stream of consciousness passages, and the odd/unresolved ending.
Thank you to the publisher Open Books who provided an advance reader copy via Edelweiss.
The strongest point of this book is the loving/supportive/respectful nature between the Silk and Johnson families that endured after Charlene's death. When the story focused on the families it was more relatable and engaging. However, there were a lot of family members to keep track of and since they traded off narrating chapters it sometimes became confusing. In fact, there was a legend at the beginning of the book outlining each character. When the storyline waded into the Silk Industries family business/clothing mill, this ushered in a cloak of darkness and corruption. I became a bit lost and detached following the business turmoil, as well as some of the stream of consciousness passages, and the odd/unresolved ending.
Thank you to the publisher Open Books who provided an advance reader copy via Edelweiss.
July 25, 2021
This is a rich book, full of detailed references to Philadelphia history and geography, and dealing with a complex set of characters grappling with issues of race, politics, family, trust, ageing, trauma, and grief. I’m awed by the author’s decision to include so many sensitive topics, particularly because the book is told from the perspective of a dozen different narrators, stream of consciousness style. How do you get inside the heads of people in 1976 as varied as a Vietnam veteran, a grieving husband, a teenage girl, and several elderly people who are losing their marbles?
The weakness of this book is, I think, lack of clarity in the plot. It’s often really hard to figure out what’s going on, as people’s thought-streams don’t adequately explain. Also the ending is disturbingly loose-ended, it’s not clear if anything whatsoever has been resolved or improved.
The weakness of this book is, I think, lack of clarity in the plot. It’s often really hard to figure out what’s going on, as people’s thought-streams don’t adequately explain. Also the ending is disturbingly loose-ended, it’s not clear if anything whatsoever has been resolved or improved.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2019
Summary: The setting is Philadelphia, 1976, just before the country’s Bicentennial. The country is still reeling from the effects of the Viet Nam war. Mayor Frank Rizzo is throwing his weight around, doing his best to foment racial uprisings, just so he can quell them with force.
In the midst of this stew are two families, the Silks and the Johnsons. They met and connected a few years previously when Paul Silk married Charlene Johnson. As the story begins, Paul has just returned to Philadelphia from Denver, about a year after Charlene died of cancer.
The Russian Jewish Silk family’s patriarch, Sam, owns Silk Industries, a textile and clothing manufacturing business, which has been in the family for a couple of generations. His two sons, one of whom is Paul, don’t want to go into the family business. Paul is a newspaper editor/reporter and his brother, Alan, is an insurance executive.
The African-American Johnson family make their way wherever they can. Charlene’s father, Charles, works as a delivery driver. Charlene’s sister is a dental office assistant and her brother, Monte is an unemployed Vietnam War veteran.
Besides the marriage that bound these two families together, they are also connected by changing times and racial prejudice. They are living in an era and a city that is experiencing growth and turmoil in it’s population, neighborhoods and political climate. Each family also faces challenges from within their own members. And each family has secrets, one of which is dangerous enough to threaten the stability of both families.
Comments: The Year of the Return is a literary snapshot of a period in Philadephia’s history. By focusing on two families whose jobs are widely spread throughout the city, –including a mobile and observant reporter–the author brought me right into that city with the Silks and Johnsons. I visited Philadelphia twice just a few years prior to this book, and I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, so I have some personal experience of the era and place to add to Popkins descriptions.
It took me a while to get into the book as it is written in a sometimes poetic stream of consciousness style. The voices, other than Monte’s utterly unique one, tended to sound much alike in my head. This was helped by the clearly named chapters so the reader would know who was speaking.
I found myself thinking about this book long after I finished reading it. 1976 was just a few years before the digital age exploded in the country. In one scene in the book, Charlene and Paul are arrested for kissing by a passing cop because they are an interracial couple Forty three years later, with a backlash political climate, ubiquitous cameras, cell phones and social media, the situation for non-whites not only hasn’t improved, it’s gotten worse.
The Year of the Return is about more than two families in one year, in one city: it is a tale about our shared past and and an arrow pointing to our troubled future.
Recommended for readers of Literary Fiction, Family Sagas and Historical Fiction.
https://thebrownbookloft.com/2019/08/...
In the midst of this stew are two families, the Silks and the Johnsons. They met and connected a few years previously when Paul Silk married Charlene Johnson. As the story begins, Paul has just returned to Philadelphia from Denver, about a year after Charlene died of cancer.
The Russian Jewish Silk family’s patriarch, Sam, owns Silk Industries, a textile and clothing manufacturing business, which has been in the family for a couple of generations. His two sons, one of whom is Paul, don’t want to go into the family business. Paul is a newspaper editor/reporter and his brother, Alan, is an insurance executive.
The African-American Johnson family make their way wherever they can. Charlene’s father, Charles, works as a delivery driver. Charlene’s sister is a dental office assistant and her brother, Monte is an unemployed Vietnam War veteran.
Besides the marriage that bound these two families together, they are also connected by changing times and racial prejudice. They are living in an era and a city that is experiencing growth and turmoil in it’s population, neighborhoods and political climate. Each family also faces challenges from within their own members. And each family has secrets, one of which is dangerous enough to threaten the stability of both families.
Comments: The Year of the Return is a literary snapshot of a period in Philadephia’s history. By focusing on two families whose jobs are widely spread throughout the city, –including a mobile and observant reporter–the author brought me right into that city with the Silks and Johnsons. I visited Philadelphia twice just a few years prior to this book, and I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, so I have some personal experience of the era and place to add to Popkins descriptions.
It took me a while to get into the book as it is written in a sometimes poetic stream of consciousness style. The voices, other than Monte’s utterly unique one, tended to sound much alike in my head. This was helped by the clearly named chapters so the reader would know who was speaking.
I found myself thinking about this book long after I finished reading it. 1976 was just a few years before the digital age exploded in the country. In one scene in the book, Charlene and Paul are arrested for kissing by a passing cop because they are an interracial couple Forty three years later, with a backlash political climate, ubiquitous cameras, cell phones and social media, the situation for non-whites not only hasn’t improved, it’s gotten worse.
The Year of the Return is about more than two families in one year, in one city: it is a tale about our shared past and and an arrow pointing to our troubled future.
Recommended for readers of Literary Fiction, Family Sagas and Historical Fiction.
https://thebrownbookloft.com/2019/08/...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews