3.5
The Keepers of the House
ByPublisher Description
Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Over the course of a century, the Howlands accumulated a fortune, fought for secession, and helped rebuild the South, establishing themselves as one of the most respected families in the state. But that history means little to Abigail Howland.
The inheritor of the Howland manse, Abigail hides the long-buried secret of her grandfather's thirty-year relationship with his African American mistress. Her fortunes reverse when her family's mixed-race heritage comes to light and her community—locked in the prejudices of the 1960s—turns its back on her. Faced with such deep-seated racism, Abigail is pushed to defend her family at all costs.
A "novel of real magnitude,"
is an unforgettable story of family, tradition, and racial injustice set against the richly drawn backdrop of the American South (
).
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Keepers of the House Reviews
3.5
“Sooo.. this was a struggle
It’s not that the writing is bad, because it isn’t.
But the density of the inner monologue made it really hard to stay engaged. I found myself having to push through pages, and at some point the story just lost its charm for me and it became more about finishing the book so I could get it over with.
I wanted to like this more, and there were moments where I could see the potential, but overall it felt like work to get through.
Not terrible, just not for me.”
“1965 Pulitzer Prize winning novel follows several generations of the Howlands, the white land owners in a small Alabama community, and their relationships with the black community. This book was necessary reading during the Civil Rights movement during the 1960’s.”
About Shirley Ann Grau
Shirley Ann Grau (b. 1929) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist of nine novels and short story collections, whose work is set primarily in her native South. Grau was raised in Alabama and Louisiana, and many of her novels document the broad social changes of the Deep South during the twentieth century, particularly as they affected African Americans. Grau’s first novel,
(1958), about the descendants of European pioneers living on an island off the coast of Louisiana, established her as a master of vivid description, both for characters and locale,a style she maintained throughout her career. Her public profile rose during the civil rights movement, when her dynastic novel
(1964), which dealt with race relations in Alabama, earned her a Pulitzer Prize.
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