Bill Broder

Taking Care of Cleo Bill Broder

From Donna Seaman's review in The Chicago Tribune "Broder's Taking Care of Cleo is a cleverly disarming mix of psychological realism, romance and comedy... Broder combines a storyteller's delight in complicated predicaments with a painter's eye for landscape and body language, and a poet's sense of place... The setting he so lushly evokes is Charlevoix, Mich., a small Lake Michigan resort town. It's 1928, the height of Prohibition, and Charlevoix is the site of a turf war between bootleggers, a dangerous situation [The Bearwalds are the only Jewish family in town, owners of the local dry goods store. Cleo, the elder daughter, is a beautiful, autistic twenty-year-old] Broder renders the emotional turmoil experienced by each of the Bearwalds with insight as their lives implode (due to Cleo's involvement in bootlegging). His portrait of Cleo, the source of the novel's radiance, is particularly arresting. As Cleo proves that she can live her own life . . . Ultimately Broder's sparkling, suspenseful and compassionate comedy of errors deftly reveals the complex symbiotic relationship between caregivers and the cared for . . ."