Excerpt from The Nesting Dolls by Alina Adams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So this antipathy toward an anniversary party is not like Zoe's Baba.

On the other hand, Zoe doesn't need to ask Mama why, in the face of Baba's resistance, Mama is still so adamant about going through with it. When your bickering parents are running the clock out on forty-five years of marriage the same way they entered it, her haranguing and his amicably agreeing, you throw them a shindig in a Russian restaurant on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, complete with a house band; a mirrored dance floor; aspic-covered fried foods; a variety of shredded, colored cabbages; and many tipsy toasts, at least 50 percent of which are required to be in rhyme. That's just what you do.

Mama claims to have no idea as to the origin of Baba's negative stance. Neither does Deda. Neither does Balissa.

They keep claiming this right up until the night of the party.

Zoe gives up and shows up as mandated, along with maybe a hundred other people who had no choice in the matter. When your bickering friends are running the clock out on forty-five years of marriage, you show up. That's just what you do.

Zoe, however, shows up with a date that, on any other occasion, would have been the talk of Brighton Beach, and still might be, provided all live through the scheduled festivities.

For now, though, Baba is at the center of the tables, and the attention. Baba and her immobile frown. The earsplitting festive music isn't doing it for her. Mama and Deda's cajoling also does no good. Mama moves on to hissed threats. Deda throws his hands in the air and pastes on a twice as wide smile, to make up for her lack of one.

Excerpted from The Nesting Dolls by Akina Adams. Copyright © 2020 by Akina Adams. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.