Mylene Dressler The Floodmakers

The Floodmakers

Mylene Dressler

Putnam, Apr 2004, $23.95, 176 pp.

ISBN: 039915163X

Octogenarian wealthy playwright Dee Buelle intimately has known death for seemingly ever. His parents died when he was a young boy and as if fate needed to punish him more his first wife passed away just after giving birth to their second child back in 1966. He met his second wife golf professional Jean who played with the real Babe (Zaharis) at an event. She helped raise his two children Harry and Sarah who call her mama.

Harry lives in New York trying to be a chip off the old block while Sarah with the help of her filmmaking husband wants to produce a documentary movie about her father. When Dee stops taking his heart medicine, Jean worries that he wants to die. Jean asks his two adult children to come to Texas for a family reunion, hoping that the two kids can motivate their dad into going back on his medicine. However, the children have agendas of their own leaving Jean to play unsuccessful peacemaker that is until a new revelation surfaces that leaves her jumping into the fracas with fists flying.

Although over the top with too many surprise shocking disclosures making it difficult for the reader to contend with, THE FLOODMAKERS remains an insightful family soap opera. Readers will appreciate the relational dynamics that dissolve into dysfunctional disarray as melodramatic moments continually surface. Fans of family crisis dramas will enjoy this saga of a unit seemingly one iota from disintegration.

Harriet Klausner