Courting disaster

In Courting Disaster, a crazed, afflicted, benighted, benign, enduring and perversely noble southern family struggles to get through a Thanksgiving from hell. By taking Tolstoy's famous dictum that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and bending it to the service of the black-comic, southern neo-gothic novel, Julie Edelson creates an extended riff on the allure of chaos, and the necessity of order. Having lost their first child to Reye's syndrome, Angie and Joe have constructed a life built on well-worn, carefully mapped fault lines. Angie smuggles marijuana to cancer patients, staying one jump ahead of the law, and jumping, too, from one affair to another. Joe, a small town attorney, has buried himself in his work, and only lately roused himself to begin an affair of his own with smart, luscious Elena Soto. Meanwhile, their teenage daughter Tess has embarked on a series of misadventures with boys, cars, running away from home, and stumbling upon her parents' trysts.