Garrett in Wedlock by Paul Mandelbaum

DeWitt Henry recommends Garrett in Wedlock, stories by Paul Mandelbaum: "In this ‘novel-in-stories,’ Garrett, who feels ‘himself to be without ethnic heritage,’ is thrown into a jumble of heritages by love of his wife and her two children by earlier marriages, one to a Norwegian adventurer, the other to an Indian bigamist. The Norwegian comes to live with them as he dies from mad cow disease. When Garrett visits India with his stepdaughter, he is challenged by meeting the birth father, and later by her conversion to Islam and insistence on an arranged marriage. Overall, Mandelbaum presents a rich cross section of contemporary family life, ruled by chaos theory and by genuine love. ‘It baffled Garrett, how people ended up the way they did’—in this case, whole, and in the family’s heart." (Berkley)