In Curse of the Blu­men­thals, jour­nal­ist Phyl­lis Karas recon­structs two dev­as­tat­ing fam­i­ly tragedies with ten­der­ness and pre­ci­sion. Long before her birth, six mem­bers of her extend­ed fam­i­ly — three adults and three chil­dren — were killed when their car was struck by a drunk dri­ver. The hor­ri­fy­ing acci­dent became nation­al news, yet Karas trans­forms what could have remained a dis­tant news­pa­per head­line into an inti­mate por­trait of grief, mem­o­ry, and gen­er­a­tional trauma. 

The author hones in on the deeply per­son­al details that sur­vived long after pub­lic sym­pa­thy fad­ed. A miss­ing shoe nev­er recov­ered from the acci­dent scene. Her moth­er qui­et­ly keep­ing her dead brother’s glass­es in a bed­side draw­er for years after­ward. These small, haunt­ing frag­ments say as much about loss as the court tran­scripts and news­pa­per clip­pings Karas includes through­out the book. The con­trast between the shat­tered Blu­men­thal fam­i­ly and the fact that all three pas­sen­gers in the drunk driver’s vehi­cle sur­vived (and the dri­ver him­self only served a brief prison sen­tence), leaves an ache that lingers long after the final pages.

Equal­ly com­pelling is how the tragedy rever­ber­at­ed across gen­er­a­tions. Par­tic­u­lar­ly evoca­tive is the sto­ry of the author’s cousin Ron­nie who was born six months after the crash and named after one of the deceased rel­a­tives. Eigh­teen years lat­er, Ron­nie is accused of mur­der, plung­ing the fam­i­ly into pub­lic scan­dal once again. Karas includes the sen­sa­tion­al news­pa­per cov­er­age that sur­round­ed the mur­der, reveal­ing events as they occurred, giv­ing the book the taut pac­ing of a sus­pense nov­el. Even read­ers who know the out­come are pulled for­ward by the author’s care­ful lay­er­ing of information.

Karas skill­ful­ly sit­u­ates both tragedies, referred to as ​“the acci­dent” and ​“the inci­dent,” with­in the broad­er social atmos­phere of Amer­i­ca from the 1930s onward. She explores Jew­ish fam­i­ly life, anti­semitism, the lin­ger­ing effects of Pro­hi­bi­tion, and the cul­tur­al and social forces that shaped both the era and the gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed. The his­tor­i­cal con­text enrich­es the nar­ra­tive with­out ever over­whelm­ing the inti­mate rev­e­la­tions of the book. For exam­ple, Karas reveals how her cousin’s sen­sa­tion­al mur­der tri­al became a fam­i­ly secret, some­thing she was warned not to dis­cuss after dis­cov­er­ing news­pa­per accounts as a child. The silence becomes almost as dam­ag­ing as the tri­al itself, illus­trat­ing how loss can become inher­it­ed, reshap­ing entire fam­i­ly iden­ti­ties for decades.

By the end of Curse of the Blu­men­thals, read­ers come away with the impres­sion of a large, deeply loy­al fam­i­ly deter­mined to pro­tect one anoth­er at all costs, even when secre­cy and denial threat­en to pull them apart. The book is a med­i­ta­tion on mem­o­ry, scan­dal, injus­tice, and the endur­ing con­se­quences of tragedy with­in one fam­i­ly. Karas han­dles every painful rev­e­la­tion with com­pas­sion and extra­or­di­nary care, cre­at­ing a work that is both his­tor­i­cal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and pro­found­ly moving.