Keystone Poetry
One Of Us

This Is Not About Us

When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.

With This Is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.

More Adult Books

  • Set in the fading splendor of 1920s Detroit and inspired by real, long-buried events, A Fortune of Sand is a glittering, gothic page-turner about power, control, and the price women pay when they demand to be seen.
  • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
  • This story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski.