Title: The Disambiguation of Susan
Author:Sarah Sarnoff
Publisher: Saint Gaudens Press
To most, life is full of ambiguities, including Susan – our heroine – especially someone who is orphaned and isn’t aware of much of her family history or heritage.
Susan Fisher is an attractive 21-year-old young woman who is well educated in secular learning, but hadn’t become aware of her family’s Jewish history and heritage, having been brought up by her very secular parents – a university professor father and high school teacher mother. While still a student in a small Midwest college she learns that her aunt in New York has passed away, resulting in her life turning topsy turvy.
Until that moment her family had always de-emphasized their Jewishness, but this all-engrossing you-can’t-put-it-down tale of a rabbi’s long-lost granddaughter will provide a very enlightening and very entertaining read about the choices that Susan has to make with her new-found financial resources, as well as her new-found opportunities to change the world and the people around her.
Of course, there’s some romance and adventure along the way.
Sarah Sarnoff’s previous works were written in a nom-de-plume and this is her first novel written in her own name. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland where she studied history and Middle Eastern languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. This wonderful novel reads as if it’s one of her engrossing day dreams – a “what if” that almost everyone has at one time or another in their lives.
The Disambiguation tells the story that “wealthy people can buy problems that the poor or average working folks could never imagine” – so went the advice to Susan by an attorney selected by her late aunt to assist Susan into her new life and position as a wealthy Jewish philanthropist and entrepreneur. Tevye said that “It’s no great honor to be poor,” but suddenly Susan learns that unexpected wealth requires quite a learning-curve, including sensing how it affects relationships with friends and family. She meets family she never knew growing up, and a new beau that she needs to figure out whether her new-found wealth, her attractiveness or her personality, or what combination are the determining factors of his interest in her.