The Tenderest of Strings

by Steven Schwartz

In search of a new life, Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld and their two children move from Chicago to the small town of Welton, Colorado, looking for all the hope that the burgeoning West has to offer—its abundance of jobs, space, sunshine, prosperity, and the promise of reinvention. Reuben, a former copyeditor at the Chicago Tribune, purchases the local town paper, the Welton Sentinel. Ardith stays home and copes with the task of fixing up an older house, which suffers such disrepair that on Halloween it’s mistaken for part of a haunted house tour. Teenaged Harry continues his life as a troubled loner, skipping school and losing his tooth in a mysterious encounter. Meanwhile, Reuben, unaware that Ardith is having an affair, worries about his wife’s growing unhappiness and distance from the family. One night, after a cookout at some friends’ dairy farm, a fatal hit-and-run occurs that shocks the community, exposes a secret, and begins to rip apart the Rosenfeld family. The Tenderest of Strings is a riveting, full-hearted story of what it takes to survive as a family in a small Western town that beckons from afar but will put its newcomers to the test of their lives.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

269 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2022

About the author

Steven Schwartz is the author of four story collections To Leningrad in Winter (University of Missouri), Lives of the Fathers (University of Illinois), Little Raw Souls (Autumn House), Madagascar: New and Selected Stories and two novels, Therapy(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and A Good Doctor’s Son (William Morrow). His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf. He has taught in the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and the MFA program at Colorado State University, where he serves as fiction editor for the Colorado Review. His latest novel is The Tenderest of Strings from Regal House.

Reviews

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steven Schwartz's new novel, The Tenderest of Strings , is beautifully written, thought-provoking family drama.

"It was sad, really, how you could become a stranger in your own marriage. You could never imagine such a thing during the promise of the beginning amidst that heady scramble to know everything about each other. It was all hunger back then."

Seeking a fresh start, Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld move from Chicago to the small western town of Welton, Colorado, with their two sons. Reuben buys the local paper with dreams of transforming it, only to realize how set in their ways the townspeople are. They also buy a dilapidated old house, but lack the money and the motivation to put the renovation plans they had into motion.

One day, their teenage son Harry, who is already troubled, is found wandering the streets, having skipped school. He apparently lost a front tooth in an incident he will not explain to his parents or police. Instead he becomes more of a loner and grows even angrier with his parents. Meanwhile, Ardith is having an affair but doesn’t know what she wants it to ultimately mean.

When a hit-and-run accident occurs one night, the town is torn apart. Secrets are uncovered, and the accident sets off a number of ripples in the Rosenfelds’ lives, ripples they’re not sure they can survive, or even if they want to.

Schwartz is a really talented storyteller. While these characters aren’t necessarily sympathetic, I found this book really fascinating. It would be a great book club or buddy read book because there are so many things you’ll want to discuss, and figure out how you might react in similar situations. I did find some of the conclusions a little abrupt.

Thanks to Regal House Publishing and Over The River Public Relations for inviting me on the tour and providing a complimentary advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review!!

The Tenderest of Strings publishes 1/4/22.

Check out my list of the best books I read in 2021 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2021.html.

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.

Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel. It's such a painful pleasure to watch characters you've come to love get themselves into difficult situations and struggle through them. The Rosenfelds are a family at a crossroads, trying to make a new life in a new community, yet still bedeviled by the things that haunt us and make us human . . . the very things that make literary fiction like this so deeply satisfying.

[Crystal Zavala · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am going to DNF this book. Too many stereotypes that are making me very uncomfortable. I need to think about my review.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautifully written book is about a family in distress. It's a book that you want to read fast to see how it ends but you also want to read slowly so you can savor every exquisite word.

Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld and their two children move from Chicago to the small town of Welton, Colorado, hoping to start a new life in the small town. They buy an older house that needs a lot of work but are convinced that they can take care of all the work. Reuben buys the small newspaper in town and their lives as part of the community begins. Ardith only has a few new friends and she is getting more and more depressed as she looks around her dilapidated house. Because the house is in such a mess, so sees no reasons to keep it neat and clean. Their oldest, Harry, is a loner who has no friends and keeps getting into trouble. They try their best to find out exactly what's wrong with him but he never shares his life with his parents. Reuben stays worried about his wife and son and works to stay connected with both of them. Ardith has an affair with the town doctor and does a good job of keeping it a secret - often difficult to do in a small town where everyone knows their neighbors business. One night after a cookout with friends, there is a tragic hit and run accident that exposes deep secrets and begins to tear apart the Rosenfeld family. Will the family survive and find the new life they were wishing for when they left Chicago or will the secrets be enough to keep them all on separate paths?

The characters in this book were very well written. Even though it was hard to sympathize with some of them, it all worked together to show a family in disarray. I especially liked Rueben. He was a deep thinker who tried to help his family as best he could before it all imploded and after that he seemed to feel more pain than anyone else. This is an intense story about a very human family who is faced with major decisions that will affect the rest of their lives as a family.

This intense book is beautiful written story of family falling apart. The characters - even the minor characters - are all written as very real people in a sympathetic manner. Even if they reader doesn't like some of them at times, together they create a story that be forgotten soon.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

[Taisia Kitaiskaia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this new novel by Steven Schwartz greedily, gripped by the intense plot and fully embodied characters. A family trying to establish a new life in small town Colorado is, from the first page, barely keeping it together. But if the family is in shambles, the novel itself is sure, moving forward with the tautness of a classical tragedy, building swiftly to a major crisis that tests parental and marital bonds to their limits. By keeping a steady hand on the characters' pain, their flaws and bad decisions and vulnerabilities, the novel is able to see their full humanity and witness their pain give and wake up into something new. A few days after finishing the book, I find myself transformed by the love that Steven Schwartz feels for his characters and a sense of wise acceptance radiating out beyond the novel's pages.

[InD'tale Magazine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing contemporary read, “The Tenderest of Strings” is a drama in book form.

Read full review in the 2021 Holiday issue of InD'tale Magazine.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review will appear in Booklist!

[Jessica Treadway · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tenderest of Strings is the tenderest of novels, in the best possible way—poignant, profound, and memorable for the depth of its characters and the complexity of their internal landscapes. I love stories about people in a family who have to find their way back to each other after a rupture, and this one is as rich and rewarding as they come. I kept wanting to know the “what happened”, but I read as much to find out how it affected the people it happened to. The writing is graceful and compelling, without ever showing the author’s hand. I closed the book feeling as if I’d just spent time with people I grew to know well, and liked, and cheered for, and would miss because their story was over. I still do.

[Nicole Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a well written book

[Marjorie Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ardith and Reuben have a problem. And it's more than a teenage son who is more than peculiar. He's angry. Author Steven Schwartz takes a Chicago family, sends them to small town Colorado in search of a new life, a gentler life, and drops them into crisis after crisis. The wise humor in this book, about helpless elements of male attraction to the most inappropriate of women-- why has no one else writen about this since Phillip Roth? -- is laugh out loud true. The helplessness of female attraction by God to the GOODNESS in an inappropriate man gives a clarity we rarely see. The complexity of an angry young teenage boy, the ease with which parents fail and fail again to understand their sons, is an insight verging on a reckoning. From the Latina smart girl whose father is in big trouble to the young mother who confesses her deepest secret to stand up for what is right, these character simmered inside me days after reading, helping me see an American dilemma: Is there a way to be good again after all our misbehavior, all our ignorance and shame? This is a highly moral, insightful, and suspenseful story of ordinary people learning the limits of ordinary love, and the power of stepping beyond those limits into acceptance, the choice to love despite all odds. A story for our time. We study bad behavior in all our media, but what about the moral ( and I don't mean self-righteous) struggles of ordinary people? I for one am glad to encounter this territory, in this novel. With his usual gentle humor and depth of insight, Schwartz reveals our human natures once more in a novel that reveals imperfect people (aren't we all?) in their imperfect striving to be good, and to be loving, both at the same time.

[Kristin (Always With a Book) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Over the River PR / Regal House Publishing for the gifted copy.

There is nothing I love more than family dramas…so of course when I was pitched this book I could not say yes fast enough. Not only was I intrigued by the plot, but I also love when I find new-to-me authors.

This book kept me engaged from the start. The family is in crisis and just cannot seem to find a way to help themselves out of their own way. Add in a mystery of who is behind the hit-and-run and there seem to be a lot of moving parts, yet it is ultimately all connected. The small-town feel really comes across, and as someone who has always lived in a small town, I really appreciated that.

I really came to love these characters, as flawed and complex as they were. While I didn’t always agree with their decisions, I found that I became quite attached to them and really wanted them to get out of their predicaments to find a better path than the one they were on.

This book is not very long but sure does pack a punch. It is another one that I think would make a good bookclub pick for all that is tackled within it, many different issues, some of which are so timely.


You can see all my reviews at: https://www.alwayswithabook.com/

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

🏔 “It was sad, really, how you could become a stranger in your own marriage. You could never imagine such a thing during the promise of the beginning amidst that heady scramble to know everything about each other. It was all hunger back then.” Steven Schwartz, The Tenderest of Strings

🏔 In this beautifully written tale, Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld move with their two children, Harry and Jamie, to Welton, Colorado. They relocated from Chicago to this small town in search of a new life. Never had they imagined the life that would transpire. A fatal hit and run accident puts into play the secret that will ultimately tear at the fabric of their family leaving them tethered by the tenderest of strings.

🏔 Mr. Schwartz has created characters so real and raw, I felt their pain. Reuben and Harry hold a special place in my heart. This riveting story has family drama, mystery, and reminds us of just how difficult it can be to be human.

🏔 I recommend The Tenderest of Strings to all who enjoy a thought provoking story that will touch your heart.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing story about family and small town living.

The Rosenfeld family move to a small town in Colorado, in hopes of a fresh start. But things prove difficult with the mindset of a small town community and fixing up the money pit of an old house they bought. Their one teenage son is troubled and struggles, but he doesn't want to talk about it. He's increasingly angry towards his parents and becomes more of a loner. His mother Ardith is having an affair and her husband wonders why she is so distant and unhappy. One night a tragedy strikes and this small town community is fractured. Exposing a secret that ripples through the Rosenfeld family.

I always enjoy a family drama and THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS was just the ticket! I read mostly female authors but enjoyed Schwartz's prose and storytelling style.

Thank you @otrpr for sending me this #arc and having me on the blog tour, opinions are my own.

For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong

[Amy Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about ordinary people, a two-parent family with two adolescent boys, who struggle to make roots in a small Colorado town. The parents and older son are bogged down by their personal secrets, emotional dilemmas and inability to manage their relationships. After a tragedy, the exposure and unraveling begin.

The author depicts these characters compassionately, both their strengths and foibles. They feel like real people, and while I sometimes rolled my eyes at the dumb things they did and said, I rooted them on as they grappled with their lives and made sense of their humanity.

While at times, I predicted some of the twists and turns of this family and community drama, the story evoked deep sentiments.

It’s a rare book that, in its conclusion, brings tears to my eyes.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any choice a person makes can result in unexpected consequences. After all, no one can predict the future. But some choices are more fraught than others, for example, surrogate motherhood or having an affair. Those actions occur in two recent novels: Jacqueline Friedland’s “He Gets That From Me” (SparkPress) explores whether blood or love makes one a true parent, while the results of an affair not only affect the spouses involved, but their eldest child in “The Tenderest of Strings” by Steven Schwartz (Regal House Publishing).
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...

[Heather Rast · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know how I feel about this book, it was a quick read… and in all honesty it seems like we don’t really get to know why certain characters act the way they do. Most things that happen just kind of resolve themselves with time but with no real intention from the characters. It also feels like not a lot of the people actually grow from certain mistakes, but rather are expected to be forgiven or forgotten as you read.
Marriages get magically fixed, kids forget the faults of parents, and it gives off a very “nothing really mattered” vibe. 🤷🏻‍♀️
Just saying characters feel “a change” doesn’t really explain to the readers how or why they got there, the beginning of the book and the end seem pretty identical.
In conclusion, there was none.

[Pam Van Dyk Writes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld are a couple in crisis. Their move from Chicago to the small town of Welton, Colorado has left them with a crumbling house and a flailing small-town newspaper. Ardith is left to manage the “fixer-upper” and raise their two boys, while Reuben struggles to revive the paper. When a tragedy strikes, it leaves the whole town, and, more importantly, the Rosenfeld’s marriage, reeling.

The Tenderest of Strings is a novel that speaks to the contemporary issues of immigrants, the tethers of marriage, the ups and downs of parenthood. It is at once a mystery, a domestic drama, and a story about the bonds of family. The Rosenfelds will stay with me a long, long time.

[Sarah Bowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rosenfeld's moved to Colorado from Chicago for a new beginning for their family.
Their son Harry has a hard time fitting in. Always getting in trouble and beat up by others. Reuben, the dad, purchases the town paper and wants to bring it back to life and better than ever but the town likes it the way it is. Ardith, the mother, has an affair with a local that everyone loves. There is a death that will tear people's lives apart.

This was a great read. Family/domestic drama with a little bit of mystery. This book shows us that there are problems everywhere but it's how we handle them they makes or breaks us. It's a very character driven novel.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Schwartz compassionately creates each character in the reader's heart, and provides a page turner to learn of their very personal life adventures, trauma and growth. The connection of the family home in perpetual physical disrepair to the emotional turmoil of the family members was thought provoking - best to get our own house in order before we criticize others for their mistakes. I especially appreciated the author's succinct story telling and the end of the story leaving me satisfied, yet open for a sequel!

[Joyce Rapoport Habalow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful written story of family falling apart. The characters are all written as very real people in a sympathetic manner. What I liked about this novel was how the challenge of reconciling with a cheating spouse was not written in a sappy or vapid way, but realistically. The characters are well drawn and interesting, and the plot is engrossing. If you like well-crafted, realistic family dramas with a dash of mystery (as well as moments of humor and psychological complexity), I highly recommend The Tenderest of Strings!

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting story line about a small town and a particular family and the issues they face - infidelity, mental illness, pregnancy, illegal and legal immigrants, prejudice, murder, and forgiveness. The storyline quickly changed, nearly mid-paragraph, and sometimes it was difficult to keep up with who was thinking or speaking and where they were because someone else had just been talking. This happened often. It ended pretty well. Hopefully, forgiveness will always win.

[Merri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was the lucky recipient of a copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway. The book deals with the challenges and pressures experienced in marriage, the growing pains of adolescents finding their way, the bonds of family even in times of crisis. I couldn’t put the book down.. I read it in one sitting. I will be anxious to read more from this author.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tender, big-hearted, beautifully written novel that plucked all the right strings. Schwartz has a gift for breathing life into his characters, and immersing the reader in their lives. By the end of the book I felt a kinship with many of them. Great read.

[E.J. Levy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Schwartz is a master storyteller who maps the human heart with rare precision and deep insight. His work is always illuminating; I cannot wait to read The Tenderest of Strings.

[HMoore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and read it very quickly. So engaging and surprising start to finish.

[Grace Malarkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

honestly really good!! the beginning is just kind of slow

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quiet novel about family and marriage and trust. A couple and their teenage sons move to rural Colorado and bring their insecurities with them.

[Ellen Ochs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, quick read.... probably 3.5 stars, but I always round up.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A page-turner that unites character, plot, and place to dazzling effect!

[Aimee Dars]

Thank you so much to @regal_house_publishing and @otrpr for including me on the book tour for THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS by Steven Schwartz.

The Rosenfeld family has moved from Chicago to Welton, Colorado, where Reuben purchased the local paper. Although relocating was supposed to give them a new start, their elder son, Harry, a loner, comes home with injuries he won’t explain, younger son Jamie still suffers from the asthma that the dry Colorado air was to have alleviated, and Ardith, a stay-at-home mother, has become embroiled in an affair with the town’s doctor. Reuben, unaware of the affair, wonders at Ardith’s distance. Meanwhile, the fixer-upper they purchased remains in disrepair, so decrepit that it is mistaken for a haunted house attraction on Halloween.

Despite the malaise afflicting the Rosenfelds, inertia maintains their fragile bonds until they learn of a fatal hit and run accident the night of a raucous barbecue they attended. The death acts as a key unlocking secrets with repercussions for the entire family and the larger community.

I really enjoyed THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS, at heart a family drama exploring the strength of love and possibly of forgiveness in the wake of trauma. The characters were extremely flawed but at the same time very likable, and I thought Schwartz did an excellent job developing distinct tones for the primary point of view characters. The young, rebellious teen Harry’s journey was particularly emotional to me.

Some comic relief comes from the paper, where reviews of local fast food restaurants are popular and the sole reporter has a column about the highly-exaggerated exploits of her toddler daughter.

If you like family dramas, books about small towns, or are looking for Jewish representation, add THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS to your TBR. I also think fans of Richard Russo would enjoy the novel.