I first encountered this author via a YA novel, but this, her first published effort, is most memorable and requires an adult sensibility to appreciate its delicacy and effective handling of acute depression on all the members of a family. Father Gordie has left his wife Augusta and high school senior son Henry. Elder son Mathew, who never bonded with any other family members, has been immersed in a life of complete solitude at college and graduate school for years. In what was apparently never a household of happiness, the schism wrecks all three and their home becomes a tomb of alienated, zombie-like protoplasm. The story is told from each point of view, and relief and recovery comes in the form of Bette Mack, a teenager Henry meets at a party. The language is precise and poetic, and for the family and for the reader, Bette's care is like blessed rain in a drought-stricken desert. This is a novel worth seeking out and owning.

Quotes: “It was easy looking back. I could do it all day, my mind like an old buried landfill.”

“On the second day he went through several bad hours thinking he should do himself in. He wasn’t sure what he was sticking around for. But the idea of being gone made him sad anyway, not necessarily because he’d miss anyone but because he couldn’t help thinking he’d sort of miss himself. His own face and his stupid jokes and the junkyard of thoughts in his head.” ( )