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Brilliantly wrought, incisive, and stirring, The Heirs tells the story of an upper-crust Manhattan family coming undone after the death of their patriarch.
Six months after Rupert Falkes dies, leaving a grieving widow and five adult sons, an unknown woman sues his estate, claiming she had two sons by him. The Falkes brothers are pitched into turmoil, at once missing their father and feeling betrayed by him. In disconcerting contrast, their mother, Eleanor, is cool and calm, showing preternatural composure.
Eleanor and Rupert had made an admirable life together - Eleanor with her sly wit and generosity, Rupert with his ambition and English charm - and they were proud of their handsome, talented sons: Harry, a brash law professor; Will, a savvy Hollywood agent; Sam, an astute doctor and scientific researcher; Jack, a jazz trumpet prodigy; Tom, a public-spirited federal prosecutor. The brothers see their identity and success as inextricably tied to family loyalty – a loyalty they always believed their father shared. Struggling to reclaim their identity, the brothers find Eleanor's sympathy toward the woman and her sons confounding. Widowhood has let her cast off the rigid propriety of her stifling upbringing, and the brothers begin to question whether they knew either of their parents at all.
A riveting portrait of a family, told with compassion, insight, and wit, The Heirs wrestles with the tangled nature of inheritance and legacy for one unforgettable, patrician New York family. Moving seamlessly through a constellation of rich, arresting voices, The Heirs is a tale out Edith Wharton for the 21st century.
"Starred Review. Just in time for poolside reading, this elegant novel wears its intelligence lightly." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Brilliantly constructed and flawlessly written, Rieger's novel brings all these moving parts together. The result is an emotional and satisfying story of how a complicated family and their outliers handle life's most pivotal moments." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Rieger's book is a tense, introspective account of looking for truth, and instead finding peace." - Publishers Weekly
"It is a charming, slightly haunting look at a family dealing with the inheritance of legacy rather than money and wondering if what happens after a relationship matters as much as how it was experienced at the time." - Booklist
"Susan Rieger is thrillingly erudite and compulsively readable, a satisfying combination hard to find in any section of the bookstore. The Heirs is an absorbing page-turner, full of sex and secrets, and I loved getting to know the entire Falkes clan." - Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers
"What a sure-footed and unfoolable writer Susan Rieger is - and what a great book The Heirs is. Unstoppably entertaining and astute, it describes its characters - the charismatic fauna of old, upper class New York - with a strange, merciless sympathy. Wonderful stuff." - Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog
This information about The Heirs was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Rieger is the author of the 2014 novel The Divorce Papers. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School and has worked as a residential College Dean at Yale and as associate provost at Columbia. She lives in New York City with her husband, the writer David Denby.
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