October 15, 2015
A woman comes to peace with her sometimes turbulent past by revisiting her childhood home in this earnest first novel. Gina Gilbertwith her architectural practice designing houses in San Francisco and her loving husband, daughter, and sonis left reeling after both of her parents die in a car crash, and she and older sister Cassie clean out the house they grew up in, a rental with a waterfront view in Maine. The house evokes memories: her photographer father's dorky love for her mother, her mother's mercurial moods that left Gina constantly on alert, ruining some holidays and leading to family estrangements. Back home, Gina is still unmoored, feeling she must return again to her old family home. Armsden works in some history through a nearby house owned by Gina's mother's family, in which George Washington once stayed and where letters written by Washington may have been hidden. But the anthropomorphized Gilbert family house and the metaphor of architecture as life are a bit of a strain in a story ultimately about love in its various forms and the peace it offers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)