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Matt Wotherspoon’s SWB RailRiders return a perfect gift for dad

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Celebrating Father’s Day with Rabbi Larry Kaplan and his many children

<p>It is always fascinating to read about the lives of the extravagantly wealthy: to hear about fabulous Manhattan apartments and incredible vacations, gorgeous clothes and everything that makes for a seemingly perfect life.</p><p>But can anyone truly have a perfect life?</p><p>&#8220;The Heirs,&#8221; a new novel by Susan Rieger, examines what happens to a family after the death of patriarch Rupert Falkes. Rupert was a self-made man: an orphan who grew up in England and moved to America as a young man. He came to New York with nothing and after going to law school at Yale, became a prominent lawyer.</p><p>He married Eleanor Phipps, the daughter of a wealthy Manhattan family and went on to father five sons: Harry, Will, Sam, Jack and Tom, who refer to themselves as the &#8220;Five Famous, Fierce, Forceful, Faithful, Fabled, Fortunate, Fearless Falkeses.&#8221; The brothers were the best of friends (most of the time), following each other from Trinity school in Manhattan to Princeton.</p><p>The family is ridiculously rich: Rupert&#8217;s father-in-law recommended he invest in McDonald&#8217;s early on, which gave them piles of money on top of what they inherited from Eleanor&#8217;s parents and what Rupert earned as a lawyer. Yes, the money allows them to do whatever they want, but they also are a very strong and loving family unit.</p><p>Understandably, they are all thrown for a loop when six months after Rupert&#8217;s death, a woman claims that she had two sons by Falkes and wants a part of his estate. The grown legitimate sons feel betrayed by their father, even as they grieve his loss.</p><p>Eleanor, on the other hand, stays very calm. She clears out her apartment, getting rid of most of Rupert&#8217;s belongings. She also is interested in setting up a trust for the newly discovered heirs, even with no way to prove that they are the sons of Rupert (there is no DNA evidence remaining to test for paternity), much to her sons&#8217; confusion and dismay.</p><p>&#8220;The Heirs&#8221; isn&#8217;t really about the paternity dispute. It&#8217;s about the life that Rupert and Eleanor built together. It&#8217;s about the people they were before they got together and the people they became after. It&#8217;s about the marriage they had. It&#8217;s about their now-grown sons.</p><p>The five sons feel as though their identity is lost by the death of their father and the sudden appearance of the two possible heirs. They were raised believing that all their successes in life were tied to their family &#8212; a cohesive and strong unit &#8212; that now is threatened by Rupert&#8217;s possible secret life.</p><p>Each chapter of the book is told from a different perspective, although within those chapters, other characters&#8217; stories are shared. We hear from Eleanor: about how she was heartbroken by an early relationship as a college student and ended up marrying Rupert because he was the right person at the right time.</p><p>We hear from the three older sons: Harry, Sam and Will and learn about their own dramas. Harry strays from his marriage; Sam ends his relationship and pursues having a child with his best friend; Will&#8217;s wife struggles with infertility. The younger brothers, Jack and Will, are mentioned frequently, but the reader gets less of an idea of who they are.</p><p>Overall, the brothers are dealing with their own circumstances, while reeling from the new knowledge of their father and their mother&#8217;s confusing reaction to the entire situation. These men aren&#8217;t always the most likeable characters, but they are very, very real.</p><p>The novel is written in a very dry tone. It isn&#8217;t frilly or overly dramatic, despite some of the soapier situations the characters find themselves in. I&#8217;ve seen a lot of comparisons to both Edith Wharton&#8217;s novels, as well as the film &#8220;The Royal Tenenbaums&#8221; and find those similarities apt. It is filled with wit and charm and more humor than I initially expected.</p><p>The Phipps-Falkes family drew me in from the start, first by the mystery of the new heirs, but then it kept me intrigued when I realized the plot wasn&#8217;t really about that. I greatly enjoyed looking through the window into this family. My one complaint is that I wish there was more to the initial plot than just a character study, but fortunately, these were characters I was glad to spend a few days getting to know.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">The initial plot of &#8216;The Heirs&#8217; is a character study, but the characters presented are a pleasure to get to know. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/web1_The-Heirs.jpg</photo0><caption0>The initial plot of &#8216;The Heirs&#8217; is a character study, but the characters presented are a pleasure to get to know. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>&#8216;The Heirs&#8217;</strong></p><p><strong>Author</strong>: Susan Rieger</p><p><strong>Pages</strong>: 272</p><p><strong>Publisher</strong>: Crown</p><p><strong>Rating</strong>: &#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her two daughters.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: ‘The Heirs’ not overly dramatic, but filled with charm, humor