Do Not Open for 50 Years

The theme [of the interview] was perfect, her agent said, the comparison between the Holocaust and Hurricane Katrina. “I think that’s a disgusting comparison,” Darby said.
Darby Cooper, the daughter of Bernie and Letty whom we met in Too Jewish, has become a bestselling New Orleans author after the turn of the millennium, drawing on the tragedy of her father’s life. It’s no wonder she feels her total losses in Katrina pale in comparison to those of Bernie: Do Not Open for Fifty Years takes its title from Bernie’s wish to shield young Darby from his oral histories of the Holocaust. But those memories have haunted her since before his tragic death in the early 1960s.
This is the story of Darby’s late-in-life triumphs, over Letty’s selfishness, her daughter’s petulance, and perhaps most of all the obliviousness of cruel schoolmates. Letty has gone missing after the storm, leaving Darby perplexed and ambivalent. Daughter Honor has come back from evacuating to Florida with a man who goes against all Darby stood for in the prequel to this book, Too Jewish: the Next Generation. And while she struggles in temporary quarters in storm-wrecked New Orleans, Darby has to face long-lost high-school classmates who want to reunite, even though they were responsible for her father’s death decades before.
Darby’s grief and bewilderment are the reader’s, but they are easily tempered by her quick wit and humorous take at even the darkest moments.