A sweeping novel that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades.
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he might create there, Bill buys the property and proposes to Penny Greenway, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life appeals to him. In less than a decade, they have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, overwhelmed and under-satisfied at a time when women chafed at the conventions confining them. And Penny will sacrifice anything to become an artist.
Years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and familiar troubles force a reckoning with their history and set off a struggle over the future. One by one they tell their stories, which reveal the intricate ways in which childhood experiences and relationships set the course for adult life and return us to our earliest selves, again and again.
“Compelling … a complex, textured tapestry … a gift to the reader.”
— Boston Globe
“Packer is a superb storyteller … the beauty comes from the rich characterizations that make each of the Blairs spring to life … I’ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“What sets this novel apart … is how deeply and intimately [Packer’s] big, plot-rich canvas captures the Blair clan’s collective and individual yearnings and disappointments … Packer’s golden touch makes us care deeply for this memorable tribe.”
— Elle
“Psychologically astute … this is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love.”
— Newsday
“The plot, centering on a spousal chasm bursting with poignancy, leads the reader through five decades … The novel’s most refreshing quality is its treatment of Silicon Valley, where the evolution of an essential modern setting is revealed through its reverberations.”
— The New Yorker