An incisive, if at times overly complex, view of the disintegration
of a modern family - in a first novel from the author of two story
collections (A Wild, Cold State, 1995, etc.). Maidie, twice
divorced and in her mid-30s, is the newly hired curator of the
Museum of Domestic History and Home Economy (soon to be renamed the
Women's History Museum) in Tucson. Having walked out on her abusive
last husband, Maidie views the new job as a fresh start. Ironically
enough, she is a sociologist specializing in family dynamics,
despite the fact that she hasn't come close to creating an ordinary
family of her own. Her mother, raised motherless herself, abandoned
Maidie and her two sisters as children, leaving the young girls in
the care of their father and the kindly old couple next door to
their home in Minnesota. Memories of the past, of her failed
romances, and of the extended families that converge on those
recollections intrude on Maidie's current life, coloring the flesh
start she hoped to make. In her first days in Tucson, meanwhile,
she meets the sexy, if much older, Rex, who rents antiques from the
museum for film props, and she also inadvertently becomes part of
the large extended family that takes up much of the neighborhood
she lives in. As Maidie slips into this new tribe, spending a lot
of her time with the clan's eccentric matriarch, she begins to feel
restless, then finds herself yearning for yet another new start -
somewhere else. When a phone call from her mother, whom she hasn't
spoken with in over 20 years, beckons her to California, Maidie is
finally compelled to face her complex and conflicted feelings about
families and independence. Overburdened with flashbacks, which slow
the pace, but a debut that nonetheless raises pertinent questions
about the fate of modern-day families, and offers some answers in
an agreeably sardonic tone. (Kirkus Reviews)
From award-winning writer Debra Monroe comes a funny and poignant story of a woman's quest to find a physical and emotional home.
Maddie, a refugee from two marriages, wanders from place to place seeking new options and new connections. She eventually settles in a cozy old neighborhood in Tucson, gets a job, and contemplates her life so far: a mother who's been missing for two decades, a father she rarely sees, two sisters married to the same men for fifteen years, and a circle of quirky, spiteful, but loyal friends. Just as she's trying to decide whether she's actually "at home" in Tucson, she receives a phone call that sends her on another journey -- one that takes her both physically and emotionally into the past and affords her a glimpse of a newfangled future.
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