Red, White and Blue by Susan Isaacs

I'm disappointed not in the novel, but in seeing how horribly so many of the Isaacs fans before me have missed the point of this latest work. Red, White, and Blue begins as a tapestry of brightly woven character vignettes where the journey takes precedence over the destination, and ends with the assertion that American patriotism is something that develops not through espousing a political agenda but through generations of living and striving to make a life for oneself in this country. I don't find it at all troubling that these characters descend from the same semi-reluctant immigrant woman, or that we know this at the outset while they do not. This bit of irony only underscores the novel's message about being American. It matters less how we identify ourselves (urban Jew, traditional western rancher) than how our history and shared cultural experiences through generations shape who we are at the core. As Americans so few of us have any grasp of our heritage going back more than a few decades, and what we do know is merely the product of what someone dared to speak aloud to the younger generation. Although we may not understand the actions or motivations of our ancestors on a conscious level, this knowledge imbues itself in our approach to the world around us and our response to adversities we face. Isaacs throws geographic, ideological, and religious barricades in front of the protagonists, setting them on opposite sides of the country and sociocultural spectrum, then sets about demonstrating all that they share without a heavy-handed shared genetic material revelation. For this, I thank her. I thank her also for shaping once again a novel of grand proportions that doesn't sacrifice the humanity of minor characters along the way.