![]() One daughter is so fascinated by the only time she saw her mother smile that she takes up with Hattie’s old boyfriend, just to try to understand the joy she once felt with him. But if the endless heartbreaks sound melodramatic - throughout the book the Shepherds endure suicide attempts, untimely deaths, child abuse by a neighbor, mental illness, tuberculosis, and a horrible accident in which a child’s skin gets burned off in a scalding-hot bathtub - Mathis earns your sympathy by making the rare moments of happiness feel simple and true. ![]() Like Toni Morrison, whose work Mathis praises in the acknowledgments, the author has a gift for showing just how heavily history weighs on families, as a learned sense of hope or despair gets passed down from parents to children and dreams die little by little, generation by generation. ![]()
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