Eugenia Zukerman

As a writer, Eugenia Zukerman has published two novels and a non-fiction book. Her articles have appeared in major publications such as the New York Times and Vogue, and she has had three screenplays purchased by major movie studios. She has also written essays for the website culturefinder.com

Deceptive Cadence Taking the Heat Coping with Prednisone

Eugenia´s new book

In My Mother's Closet

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Deceptive Cadence
ISBN 0-670-26236-6
a novel by Eugenia Zukerman

Tibor Szabo is young, talented, and idolized. A Hungarian-born concert pianist of the first rank, adored in public and in private for his fiery performances, his devotion to music, his gallantry and charm, he moves from triumph to triumph - in New York and San Francisco, London, and the great cities of the Continent. Eugenia Zukerman´s witty and polished debut novel is Tibor´s story, told with an insider´s knowledge of today´s restless international music scene.

``Eugenia Zukerman knows totally what she is talking about and talks with never a word too many. Her prose is no less professionally rich and slick than her flute playing: gilded and terrifying in the high register, breathy and carnal in the lows. I couldn´t put the book down, hated to finish it.´´

-- Ned Rorem

Eugenia Zukerman Music is the heartbeat of this book - the submission it demands from a truly great artist, the satisfaction it brings, and the discontent. Tibor´s harrowing and relentless schedule suggests a growing conflict between the demands of his successful career and a sensitive man´s desire for the respite and warmth of personal commitment. His love for Sally Fraser, a willful, spirited English painter, and his friendship with the novelist Werner Rawlings seem to promise the stability he craves. But the threesome becomes a dangerous triangle, and Tibor, now doubting everything - music, the gratification of performance, even life itself - astonishingly disappears before a major concert.

``Congratulations! I enjoyed Deceptive Cadence very much, and find it one of the rare pieces of contemporary fiction by a musician to be a real read - engaging, stylistically strong, witty and touching.´´

-- Leonard Bernstein

The crisis in Tibor´s life resolves, finally, like a deceptive cadence, into an unexpected key; his renewed dedication to the unique and perilous art of making music brings this unusually entertaining and moving novel to its satisfying close.

Taking the Heat
ISBN 0-671-70874-0
a novel by Eugenia Zukerman

A passionately realized woman´s novel of adultery and guilt from the internationally renowned musician and novelist Eugenia Zukerman.

``Taking the Heat is an eloquent and passionate novel. It takes the world of music and sets it on fire. A great love story.´´

-- Pat Conroy

Eugenia Zukerman Taking the Heat is the mesmerizing story of a married woman, her impulsive, passionate affair with a virtual stranger, the gradual collapse of her marriage, the unexpected tragedy that follows, and her struggle for recovery through her music.

Nora Waterman is a flutist who has put her career aside to be wife and mother. Her husband, Bernie, is a successful television producer, a man not unacquainted with extra-marital liaisons. Quite accidentally, Bernie learns that for a year Nora has been deeply involved with another man. Nora struggles to hold the marriage together and continues to mother her winning seventeen-year-old son, but when unimaginable tragedy strikes, the marriage and her sanity crumble. Slowly, painfully, Nora goes about the business of reclaiming her life.

``I couldn´t resist reading this wonderful book straight through. Taking the Heat is a fine and touching novel, whose every note rings true.´´

-- Peter Benchley, author of Jaws

Zukerman´s moving, bracing story sweeps us from the quiet suburbs of New York to the world of Polish gypsies and home again. With an unfailing eye, she explores the nooks and crannies of a woman´s feelings - from her erotic heights to her depths of despair.

``Once again, Eugenia Zukerman has created a world so richly textured that it feels real. Taking the Heat is passionate, moving and very wise - a wonderfully intelligent novel.´´

-- Susan Isaacs
author of Almost Paradise and Shining Through

This is a novel of guilt and loss. It is, too, a tale of strength and redemption. Eugenia Zukerman takes her reader on an emotional roller-coaster ride reminiscent of Ordinary People, The Good Mother, or Fatal Attraction, and behind her story, always, there is her shimmering milieu of music.

Coping with Prednisone*
It may work miracles, but how do you handle the side effects?
(*and other cortisone-related medicines)
ISBN 0-312-15502-6
by Eugenia Zukerman and Julie R. Ingelfinger, M.D.

Approximately one million Americans per year take high doses of prednisone and related drugs (glucocorticoids) to treat serious illnesses and conditions ranging from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis to kidney diseases to organ transplantation. While these medicines may have unpleasant, even devastating, physical and psychological side effects, they may also be the only treatment available for serious or life-threatening illnesses.

Eugenia Zukerman and Julie R. Ingelfinger

Eugenia Zukerman and Julie R. Ingelfinger

When the world-renowned flutist Eugenia Zukerman developed a rare lung disease, she discovered prednisone´s risks and benefits. Yes, it could save her life, but the side effects, which can include bloating, intense mood swings, changes in hair and skin, gastrointestinal problems, and increased susceptibility to infection, could also threaten her livelihood and sense of well-being. Fortunately, Eugenia has a doctor in the family. Her sister, Julie R. Ingelfinger, a well-known specialist in pediatric nephrology and hypertension at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, quickly volunteered to help Eugenia in minimizing the potential side effects. In her search for appropriate and detailed materials to help her sister cope with her course of prednisone, Julie was startled to find out how little help was available for patients undergoing this difficult treatment. Together the two sisters decided to remedy this situation with a detailed, practical guide to making treatment with glucocorticoids as effective and as trouble-free as possible.

``This book is a superb resource for patients and professionals: a must-read for anyone taking or prescribing high-dose steroids.´´

-- Nina Tolkoff-Rubin, M.D.
director of Dialysis and Renal Transplantation, Massachusetts General Hospital

``I wish this book had been available in 1990, when I had a heart transplant; it would have saved me countless hours of anguish and concern... I will place this valuable book next to the dictionary and the encyclopedia--books that I refer to all the time.´´

-- Samuel Sanders, concert pianist and chamber musician

``There's now a highly useful, state-of-the-art and engaging book to guide the many who must use long-term cortisone-related medicines. What a wonderful addition.´´

-- Herbert Benson, M.D.
author of The Relaxation Response and Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief

``Coping with Prednisone is a brilliant and much-needed guide to the potential nutritional, emotional, and physical side effects for those taking high doses of the steroid drug prednisone.´´

-- Judy Collins, singer

``Coping with Prednisone is a helpful guide for both patients and professionals. Speaking both as a patient who has taken steroids and as a physician, I only wish this resource had been available earlier.´´

-- Susan G. Lazar, M.D.
Clinical professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and George Washington University School of Medicine

``The information included is terribly important for singers and others who are frequently prescribed prednisone at any time during their careers.´´

-- Marilyn Horne, mezzo soprano

Julie R. Ingelfinger, M.D. is chief of the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital, directs her own research laboratory, and is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Julie has written more than 130 articles, authored a book on pediatric hypertension, and is the editor of a textbook that comes out every other year, Current Pediatric Therapy. She lives is Boston.

Photos of Eugenia Zukerman by Thomas Victor & Christian Steiner.
Photo of Eugenia Zukerman & Julie R. Ingelfinger by Diane Asséo Griliches