"Mutual Life & Casualty is a compelling and meticulous portrait of how a well-meaning but troubled family shapes the lives of two young sisters as they emerge from childhood and enter adulthood. The era is the 1970s and early 80s and the sisters. Hannah and Carolyn Kahn, have a lot to contend with. More than anything, they face the dark cloud of their parents' fragile marriage: a demanding, workaholic father who sells insurance and a sympathetic, shopaholic mother who would like to leave her loveless marriage but is too scared to do so. Add to that the ongoing social pressures of the time: women's changing roles, Vietnam's lingering pall and families breaking apart generally. Further complicating the sisters' lives is their status as the only Jewish family residing in their small Connecticut town. In this novel of compassionate and beautifully interwoven stories, Elizabeth Poliner's debut integrates the lives of Hannah and Carolyn with those of several other town members. In the end, Mutual Life & Casualty refers less to the Hartford insurance company where the girls' father works than to the interconnectedness of all of Poliner's characters and the wounds they suffer because of it.