A Call from Spoon­er Street brings the read­er into the home of the Rosens, who have lived on Spoon­er Street in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin for decades. Pro­fes­sor Peter Rosen lives there alone since his wife passed away; their only child, Mar­lene, has moved to New York for under­grad­u­ate school, stay­ing for her doc­tor­ate in sociology.

The book opens when Mar­lene learns that her father has fall­en in the snow and is being hos­pi­tal­ized for hypother­mia. She has feel­ings of dread while pack­ing to trav­el to Spoon­er Street to be at her father’s side: ​“I mean Peter has nev­er need­ed any­one, except to lis­ten to his lec­tures and he’ll make my time with him a misery.”

Peter Rosen is a retired pro­fes­sor and Ger­man lit­er­a­ture crit­ic. He is also a Holo­caust sur­vivor. Although his stu­dents ​“remem­bered him fond­ly[…] they joked about his intem­per­ate reac­tion when they failed to meet his impos­si­ble Euro­pean stan­dards of excel­lence.” These exact­ing stan­dards car­ried into his fam­i­ly life. Peter and Mar­lene were con­stant­ly at odds: ​“she hat­ed her father’s cru­el­ty and scorned his ambi­tion and mount­ing achieve­ments.” Hav­ing received her doc­tor­ate in soci­ol­o­gy, she was liv­ing alone in New York when she became preg­nant. ​“You’re on your own with this,” he told her. ​“I’m not inter­est­ed in your plans.”

But every fam­i­ly goes through cycles of joy and sor­row, con­flict and res­o­lu­tion. After the death of Marlene’s moth­er, Peter’s affec­tion for his grand­son allows the Rosens to reunite. ​“If Peter had con­tin­ued to be a crit­i­cal and dis­parag­ing father, he had been a devot­ed grand­fa­ther. With Noah, an easy love had made him flex­i­ble and for­giv­ing.” Asch­er demon­strates how friends — such as Peter’s life-long best friend and uni­ver­si­ty col­league, Wal­ter — can also become an inte­gral part of a family.

The com­plex, fas­ci­nat­ing Rosen fam­i­ly dynam­ic reflects Ascher’s own per­son­al his­to­ry as the descen­dant of Jews who escaped — and some who didn’t — the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust. Through rich and col­or­ful char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, the read­er is led to dis­cov­er the sim­i­lar­i­ties in all fam­i­lies. This nov­el is a mov­ing, ten­der, and delight­ful read.