MANNY AND FRANCES

The daughter and granddaughter of a doctor and a lawyer offer a biographical collection of letters, memories, and photographs.

This family memoir moves back and forth between different eras, detailing the beginning and end of the marriage of Emanuel “Manny” Schoenbach, a physician, and his spouse, attorney Frances Rubens Schoenbach, who were both born in New York City to immigrant parents. The book opens with a sweet account of their chance meeting in high school in 1927 and closes with the aftermath of Manny’s untimely demise at the age of 40, due to coronary thrombosis, in 1952. The story of their relationship has a sweetness to it, as it shows how Manny and Frances constantly encouraged each other to follow their dreams and pave their own way. A recurring theme is the couple’s unconventionality, which reveals itself in a variety of ways. For example, after their first meeting in high school, Manny and Frances kept in touch in college through letters, which was uncommon. After graduating from Harvard University, Manny, against his father’s wishes, attended medical school; he was driven to do so by the fact that he’d lost siblings to infectious diseases in his youth. Frances, meanwhile, was among the first women to attend law school (at Boston University in the 1930s) and pass the New York State Bar. The two wed in 1934 and built a home and family together, and throughout it all, each continued to support the other’s aspirations. According to the foreword, authors Reasenberg and Schoenbach—the couple’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively—based the book “on both research and memory,” which is not unusual for the genre; much of it is written in detailed scenes with extensive dialogue drawn from Reasenberg’s memories of her mother’s stories, rather than summarized events. This has the effect of producing an engagingly intimate, if somewhat speculative, depiction of a wonderful relationship. As it details the lives of a professional couple—at a time when such relationships were few and far between—it convincingly makes the case that the Schoenbachs were, indeed, extraordinary.

A lovely portrait of an uncommon couple.