A Milwaukee Inheritance

“A Milwaukee Inheritance is, as advertised, a loving, knowing paean to the Cream City, itself, but also to our great American middle—about which not enough can be written—and as such has its own honest inheritances in Howells, Anderson, Bellow, Gass, Oates, Dybek—all heroes and—among whom David Milofsky’s measured, poignant, plain-spoke midwestern sentences and intelligence stand out vividly. It’s a novel that welcomes us”
—Richard Ford

Successful Yale Law School grad Andy Simonson returns to Milwaukee if not in triumph, at least thinking he is better off than his blue-collar upbringing. But coming home again isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. A childhood friend lands him an associate gig at a big downtown firm and Andy settles into a lakeside mansion with his mercurial wife, Moira. But when his artist mother exacts a deathbed promise that he take over as landlord of her rundown duplex on the East Side, complete with delinquent occupants, Andy is forced to decide which vows he can honor.

As Moira’s obsession with starting a family and the temptations of her friend Patsy threaten to upend his marriage, Andy is roped into an unwinnable domestic dispute involving his shady tenant, and former classmate, Frankie “The Pin” Pignatano. A Milwaukee Inheritance is a slow-burning, finely textured portrait of family dynamics, the secrets between generations, and how the shadows of the past can keep you from moving into the future.