Darchei Noam דרכי נועם

​Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.

On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive—a young couple expecting a baby boy—it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans’ brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife’s decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.

About the Author

Dani Shapiro is a best-sell­ing nov­el­ist and mem­oirist and host of the pod­cast Fam­i­ly Secrets (now in its sev­enth sea­son). Her work has been fea­tured in The New York Times, The New York­er, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Colum­bia and New York Uni­ver­si­ty and is the co-founder of the Siren­land Writ­ers Con­fer­ence. She lives in Litch­field Coun­ty, CT.

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Bookmarks: Aggregated reviews of Signal Fires

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Read remarks by Dani Shapiro upon being awarded the Jewish Book Award's JJ Green­berg Memo­r­i­al Award for Fic­tion for her nov­el Sig­nal Fires.