Contender for the 2016 Tournament of books!
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-2016-tournament-of-books-shortlist-and-judges

Not one that particularly screams out to me to be read, but I found a really cheap copy anyway. And also water damaged.

This isn't particularly a book I might have reached for, if it wasn't included in the 2016 Tournament of Books ( themorningnews.org/tob ) and I didn't find a cheap copy. This is a case of I'm not sure what a book is aiming to do, therefore it might not be as successful as it could be. This is largely a multi-generational family portrait, with pieces of the puzzle slowly revealed, but I feel like a lot of the pieces were missing. One example: early on in the book, a successful lawyer in her 30s or 40s says to her brother many years younger than her that she can forgive her brother Denny for everything except for taking much of her parents attention away from her and the other two siblings. This was surprising to me, as all of the children seemed well adjusted enough. Denny was a moody kid but when he hit nineteen, he would disappear from his family for years without even a phone call. So other than worry, I'm not sure how much attention he was taking from his parents. On the other hand, in most cases, I think it would take some support from your parents to become a lawyer. I was thinking that throughout the book, more would be revealed as to why the sister thought this way, or some further indiscretion from Denny (or even reasons for his moodiness), but not much else was revealed. Otherwise, this is a history of a family, mysterious grandparents Junior and Linnie Mae in the Great Depression, Junior's son Red and his wife Abby living in the house Junior built, and all of their children. The book was alright to me, but this was such a cast of characters that I feel like it was impossible to find all of those puzzle pieces.

enjoy