A good house.

Summary: Bill Chambers has come home from the Second World War with several fingers of his right hand missing but with his will to restore his family life intact. He wants the best for his wife, Sylvia, and his children, Patrick, Paul, and Daphne, and with his steady job at the hardware store the future stretches out before him. So opens Bonnie Burnard's brilliant, superbly crafter novel about three generations of an ordinary small town family from the 1950s to the 1990s. Through years of family rituals-weddings and funerals, births and holidays-generations intertwine, pull apart, come together again. As the family members spread out from their small town into the larger world, the bonds deepen and widen, sometimes fray. Loyalties are tested by time and chance, people resort to necessary, self preserving lies, and love creates its own snares. Each character must live out his or her own destiny, not knowing what triumphs or tragedies lie ahead. Bill believes that the future should be an unfolding of one generation to another and at first faces it with optimism. Sylvia watches helplessly as fate unexpectedly changes the course of her life. Patrick, the eldest son, finds that his life becomes a series of compromises. Paul enjoys a perfect marriage that produces an imperfect daughter. Daphne, always the odd child out, makes her own rules and happily pays the price. The family is held together by Margaret, the second wife, who enters it at a moment of crisis and over time becomes its emotional centre. Burnard has created people we can all recognize and her compelling characterization cuts close to the bone. --[Book Jacket].