Word: great-aunt
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...were not for a tightfisted great-aunt, Henry Bloch is convinced he would be just another Kansas City stockbroker today. The rich spinster rebuffed the ex-serviceman's plea in 1946 for a $50,000 loan to launch a large company that would sell office services to small businesses; she only lent him $5,000, Had she been more openhearted, Henry Bloch believes, he and his brother Richard would have started too grandly and quickly gone broke...
James Johnston was Bruce's son, and he vanished soon after rumors began circulating that he, like his brother Bruce Jr., 20, known to the family as "Little Bruce," had turned on his father. The boys had been raised by Grandmother Harriet Steffy and Great-Aunt Sarah Martin. "They didn't start hanging around with their father until a couple of years ago," recalled the grandmother. "I prayed for them, but I guess they just liked having money in their pockets...
Bruce Sr., whose intelligence system was at least as good as that of the police, got word of Little Bruce's defection and of reports that James might also testify against him. On Aug. 15, James phoned Great-Aunt Sarah to say that his father had told him not to appear before the grand jury. "I'll be gone for a couple of days," he said. That was the last heard from James until his body was found...
...motives are mixed. Some girls invoke principle; one young lady points out that she is "the first Jew ever to set foot in this club, let alone debut in it." Others envision more concrete rewards: "my folks promised me a car for this." "My Great-Aunt Alicia would turn in her grave if I didn't" is a common explanation. A few are cheerful--"This should be a blast"; most are; resigned. Only one fails to see the point in any of it. "It's so silly--my boyfriend's already asked me if he could ask me to marry...
...justification and denies the possibility of the future by killing himself. The other characters in the book--two cousins Frances meets in the course of the novel, her brother Hugh, her father--seek their solutions in forms of solitude, even after the death from starvation of a neglected great-aunt reveals the hazards of such a course...