Off to Join the Circus — Deborah Kalb

What happens to the close-knit Pinsky family of suburban Washington, D.C., when a relative returns after 64 years?


Adele Pinsky ran away as a teenager back in 1954, perhaps to join a circus. The repercussions from her departure reverberated down the generations, affecting her younger brother, Howard, now a 75-year-old retired lawyer; his educator wife, Marilyn; their three daughters; and their two teenaged grandsons. Adele's reappearance in 2018, at a moment when the family is preparing for the younger grandson's bar mitzvah and the birth of the middle daughter's baby, upends the Pinsky family's assumptions about one another in hilarious and poignant ways.