First published 1983
The Neumillers gather around the kitchen table in their North Dakota farmhouse, but the conversation carries the weight of decades. Martin Neumiller watches his children grow and scatter, while his own father's stories echo through the rooms. Each generation faces the same questions in different times: how to hold a family together when the world pulls it apart, how to pass down what matters most, how to forgive the people you love most deeply. The family moves from rural beginnings to suburban changes, through marriages and losses, arguments and reconciliations. Young Charles Neumiller struggles to understand his place in this long chain of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. The bedroom wall becomes a boundary between private struggles and shared lives, between what families show each other and what they keep hidden. This is the story of how ordinary people create extraordinary bonds across time.
Genres: family, american-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, multigenerational
Setting: North Dakota
Period: 20th Century
Paperback · Avon Books