Editorial Content for Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

Fern, Edgar and their three children are the kind of family who might show up in a Ralph Lauren ad. Fern comes from old money, and Edgar is the only son of a wealthy steel magnate. They were high school sweethearts and now, in their early 30s, live a comfortable life, with a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a summer home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Neither of them has had to work a day in their lives. Fern, who at times has felt drained by the incessant demands of wifehood and motherhood, and bereft after the death of her troubled twin brother, attended classes at Radcliffe for a time. It’s 1976, and Edgar has spent the years since his military service during the Vietnam War (during which his father pulled some strings to get him a posting in Alaska rather than on the warfront) writing a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about a young man with a complicated relationship to his own privilege. Edgar has spent his whole life simultaneously relying on his family wealth and resisting it, but always --- at least on some level --- taking it for granted, since it’s all he’s ever known.

"...a beautifully written exploration of the ease afforded by unexamined privilege and the potential for one to find value and identity through one’s vocation and through hard work."

However, in the wake of the deaths of Fern’s parents during one of those idyllic Martha’s Vineyard days, the lawyers call. It turns out that there’s no money left in Fern’s family estate, and the couple is going to need to sell their home just to pay for the taxes owed. That is, unless Edgar is willing to take up the family business, a proposition that will not only compromise his idealism but also make his novel (which has just been accepted for publication) seem hypocritical and false.

Wracked with fear and uncertainty, both Fern and Edgar undergo personal crises of confidence, which lead them to abruptly leave Boston and head in different directions as they try to figure out what to do next. The only problem? Both assume that the other will be at home to take care of the three children, but instead, their nine-year-old daughter Cricket is left in charge of her younger brothers. Fueled by her charismatic teacher’s visions of a romantic Native American past, Cricket leads her siblings into a sort of Neverland, subsisting on baked beans and living in a teepee erected in their backyard.

Although the premise of Ramona Ausubel’s novel is compelling enough, what makes it truly memorable and important are the journeys taken by each of these characters, all of whom, regardless of age, have made the assumption that their comfortable, predictable lifestyle would always be there for them. In the absence of that privilege, all three characters struggle to define who they really are or who they want to be. SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY is a beautifully written exploration of the ease afforded by unexamined privilege and the potential for one to find value and identity through one’s vocation and through hard work.