The Cohen Family Is in Crisis in “A Reason to See You Again”: 'The Games Families Play with Each Other' (Exclusive)

In bestseller Jami Attenberg's expansive new novel, the death of their patriarch sends a mother and her daughters reeling

We all know there's no running from the past, but that doesn't stop the Cohen women from trying in bestselling author Jami Attenberg's decades-spanning new novel.

In A Reason to See You Again, out Sept. 24 from Ecco, the troubled Frieda and her daughters Shelly and Nancy all spin off in vastly different directions after the death of their patriarch, Rudy. Beginning in the 1970s and spanning the next 40 years, the novel follows the trio through "a swiftly changing American landscape as they seek lives they can fully claim as their own," according to the publisher.

Called a "kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another and the many unexpected forms that love can take," it's a luminous, witty, empathetic novel.

Meet the Cohens in an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, below.

Oh, the games families play with each other. In the Cohen household, it was Scrabble and they played it every Saturday night. This was one of Frieda’s rules. Telephone unplugged, the whole family together. The girls were still young enough that they had nowhere urgent to be but right there. Nancy, 16; Shelly, 12. Idling in the living room with their father, Rudy, while Frieda made popcorn in the kitchen.

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Tonight Lawrence Welk led some orchestral tribute to America on the television set, Rudy nodding his head along to the music. Rudy: frail, angular, fading, but loving and present. A real bon vivant when he had the energy. I want him alive, thought Frieda. I must feed him.

A frantic feeling. Him, she must take care of him. She salted and buttered the popcorn in good, thick, fatty layers. Humming as she delivered it in a Tupperware bowl to the family, who sat, sunken in a green velvet conversation pit. A Lucite table at the center, set up with the game board. A family waiting. Press play.

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Shelly clapped for the popcorn. “It smells divine,” she said. “What a delicious and satisfying treat.” Shelly always trying on words for size. She popped one piece after another into her mouth; she liked to have something to do with her hands. A place to direct her nervous energy, thought Frieda.

This whole family was nervous. Everyone was worried about Rudy, who had been sick and then not sick and then sick again. It had been this way for years. Malnutrition in his youth, in the camps, and all the stress, then and always. Now he had a bad heart. He was 41 and looked 60. A little worse this year, but then again, what did worse mean when things had been bad for so long?

So, it was good for them all to be together, thought Frieda, every Saturday. A regular moment for the family, private, after the crowds at shul the night before. But also: she wanted to win at Scrabble.

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The girls were good at the game. Competitive enough to keep things interesting. Frieda had taught them some tricks. All the two-letter words, the most potent available ways to use Q and X. Their little sponge minds preparing for their next moves.

There was Nancy, organizing her tiles to be just so. She liked it when ideas clicked together easily and was sharp enough to find a few five- or six-letter words here and there. A tidy girl. Demure, pretty. Mildly interested in lots of things but not one thing especially. She’d do all right, thought Frieda. At this game. In life.

Shelly was the real challenger in the family: strategic, focused, unflappable. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, healthy, peach-toned skin, a generally intense presence, even for a child. She left no loose ends behind, blocked every exit and entry point if she could help it. Our little winner, thought Frieda. Smarter than everyone in the room, perhaps. But she better not beat me, thought Frieda. Not yet.

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Rudy was a useless competitor, just there to have fun with his family. English was his second language and though he spoke it well, he didn’t have the same competitive spirit attached to the game. “Now if this were in German, I would defeat you all,” he said. “Lawrence Welk is who I should be playing.”

He was daydreamy and faint and beautiful; their thin, pale Papa, who had been released from the camps barely a teenager, starved, starving and made his way to America to exist as a hero in their eyes. The girls could not ever imagine being as hungry as he had been. All of them wondered, marveled at his presence. He knew how to hold a room — even if it was simply by being alive.

For a while, when he was younger, he had given speeches to temples across America about his journey. What was it like in the camps? The American Jews really wanted to know. Most survivors didn’t want to talk about it, but Rudy thought it was important they hear the truth.

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When Frieda had met him, he had seemed so sophisticated even in his frailty. An elegant speaker, and funny, too. That silk scarf he had tied around his neck. What a story. He told it well. People warmed to him quickly. He had needed a secretary, he said, and she traveled with him, until it was just easier to be married. Frieda was only 19. Attached, already, to a man. She thought he’d be the breadwinner forever. He should be paid for what he went through; she firmly believed that.

Once, Hollywood had even been interested in what had happened to him. Rudy and Frieda as newlyweds, poolside, sunburned, giddy. A cabana boy dipping to serve them. A producer who had rushed in, ordering a drink from no one in particular as he moved along the patio, then shaking Frieda’s hand and holding it for a moment with both of his.

And then: nothing happened. Letters still arrived on occasion, typed, formal, offering a travel stipend and maybe a small speaker’s fee. They saved them up and placed a down payment on this house that Rudy, with all his stylish desires, had wanted. This modern home.

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But then there had been new wars. And then fewer speeches to give, and, after a while, less of everything else in their lives. Bookkeeping work for him, shifts in a nursing home for her. Popcorn at home cost less than popcorn in the movie theater. No one knew how to budget quite like Frieda. Scrabble — Frieda’s favorite — was entirely free, of course. And tonight, Shelly was winning. By a lot.

“Does anyone want some more popcorn?” Frieda didn’t wait for an answer. In the kitchen, she stole sips of slivovitz from a handle of it hidden in the cupboard behind the tea kettle. A fresh bottle, purchased last week, after she had started work in a new home. She was an aide like her mother, Goldie, had been before her in her way, always tending, tending to people. One husband for Goldie, and then another, until there was no one left, and certainly no one to take care of her, Frieda already long gone.

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She, too, had liked her sips of slivovitz to pass the time, sometimes sharing it with young Frieda to keep her quiet. Frieda didn’t even like the taste of it, hadn’t then, still didn’t now, but the general effect of it was soothing and familiar. Someday she would develop a new favorite drink. Someday she would drink whatever was around, no matter what, just to be drunk. Thoughtlessly. In between caring for others. Care was what she was good at. The care of strangers. Strangers and husbands. Not children.

Whose children were these? she sometimes thought. Now they were people. Who beat her at Scrabble. They would leave her someday and not look back for a long time. But she didn’t know that yet.

When Rudy dies a year later, the Scrabble box will gather dust for a while, and then the three remaining Cohens will try and play it again, and it will not end well: Frieda, now entirely incapable of playing nice, taking big, blatant swipes at her daughters, Shelly grimly staring at the board, and finally, Nancy bawling, and stomping out of the room. (Why am I always the baby here, thought Nancy that night, wistful, alone, in her room, when I’m the oldest? How did it end up like this?) They needed Rudy to balance things out. But Rudy was gone.

From A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg. Copyright © 2024 by Jami Attenberg. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg comes out Sept. 24 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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