Katey Snow, seventeen, slips the pickup into neutral and rolls silently out of the driveway of her Vermont home, her parents, Oliver and Ruth, still asleep. She isn't so much running away as on a journey of discovery. She carries with her a packet of letters addressed to her mother from an old army buddy of her father's. She has only recently been told that Oliver, who she adores more than anyone, isn't her biological father. She hopes the letter's sender will have answers to her many questions. Before We Sleep moves gracefully between Katey's perspective on the road and her mother, Ruth's. Through Ruth's recollections, we learn of her courtship with Oliver, their marriage on the eve of war, and his return as a changed man. Oliver had always been a bit dreamy, but became more remote, finding solace most of all in repairing fiddles. There were adjustments, accommodations, sacrifices-but the family went on to find its own rhythms, satisfactions, and happiness. Now Katey's journey may rearrange the Snows' story.
A fierce and compelling vision of an American landscape and its history, and an unforgettable portrait of a fascinating family.In the Fall is an epic of three generations of a family, the dark secrets that blister at its core, and the forbidden transcendent love affairs that fuel the characters over the course of six decades.The story opens in the twilight of the Civil War, when a Union soldier meets a runaway slave and returns with her to his family homestead in Vermont, launching the story of a bold interracial union and its consequences. This passionate couple and their descendants will grapple with the ongoing devastations of the war, racism, and a haunting family legacy that lies dormant until a grandson is driven to discover the secret of his ancestors.Spanning a post-Civil War American to the edge of the depression, In the Fall is an incredible rendering of a rapidly evolving world from life on a farm, through the early days of Prohibition and bootlegging in the resort towns of New Hampshire, to the genesis of the motor car.
Set in the art scene of postwar New York, a commune in the early seventies, and contemporary small-town New England, A Peculiar Grace is a remarkable achievement by one of our finest authors and an insightful portrait of family secrets, with an unforgettable cast of characters who have learned to survive by giving shape to their losses.
