A TRUE AMERICAN FAMILY SAGA: Can we learn from our ancestors? Do our
relatives’ behaviors help shape our own? In "Unexpected Gifts" that is
precisely what happens to Sonia, a confused college student, heading for
addictions and forever choosing the wrong man. Searching for answers,
she begins to read her family’s diaries and journals from America’s
past: the Vietnam War, Woodstock, and Timothy Leary era; Tupperware
parties, McCarthyism, and Black Power; the Great Depression, dance
marathons, and Eleanor Roosevelt; the immigrant experience and the
Suffragists. Back and forth the book journeys, linking yesteryear with
modern life until finally, by understanding her ancestors' hardships and
faults, she gains enough clarity to make some right choices.
