This is a story of the Burgess family twins, Bob and Susan Burgess, and their older brother, Jim. An accident happens when they are all children. When the father leaves the children in the car for a few minutes, one of them gets behind the wheel pretending to drive. The car rolls backwards, killing the father. This incident dramatically affects the entire family. The story takes place in a small town in Maine where the children grew up with just their mother to raise them, doing the best she could.
The two brothers escape to NYC as soon as they can. Both become lawyers. The older brother, Jim, becomes a successful corporate lawyer whom the twins idolize. The twin brother, Bob, becomes a Legal Aid attorney who is always belittled by his eldest brother. Their sister Susan stays behind in Maine. All is well until Susan’s lonely teenage son Zach urgently calls them to say that he has gotten himself into a world of trouble and needs their help. When the brothers return to their childhood home in an effort to help get their nephew out of this mess, the long-buried family tensions begin to surface and unravel in unexpected ways that change all of them forever.
I enjoyed this novel by Elizabeth Strout. She develops and gives insight into her characters, and it is a very deep look into a family’s struggles and triumphs. I found it a very interesting read with many surprises along the way on how each of these characters deal with the family turmoil as the author exposes the tensions that can fester in a family, especially when they return to their childhood home.