Housekeeping: 40th Anniversary

A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping follows Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, as they grow up in the small lakeside town of Fingerbone. After their mother’s death, they pass from the care of their practical grandmother to two well-meaning but hapless great-aunts, and finally to Sylvie—their mother’s eccentric, distant sister.

Fingerbone sits beside a glacial lake marked by family tragedy, where their grandfather died in a train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff. Against this stark landscape, Ruth and Lucille’s coming of age reveals the quiet costs of loss, survival, and the pull of a transient life.

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award.