House of Happy Endings

Howard Garis creator of the famed Uncle Wiggily series along with his wife Lilian were phenomenally productive writers of popular children''s series—including The Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift—from the turn of the century to the 1950s. In a large romantic house in Amherst Massachusetts Leslie Garis her two brothers and their parents and grandparents aimed to live a life that mirrored the idyllic world the elder Garises created nonstop. But inside The Dell—where Robert Frost often sat in conversation over sherry and stories appeared to spring from the very air—all was not right.Roger Garis''s inability to match his parents'' success in his own work as playwright novelist and magazine writer led to his conviction that he was a failure as father husband and son and eventually deepened into mental illness characterized by raging mood swings drug abuse and bouts of debilitating and destructive depression. House of Happy Endings is Leslie Garis''s mesmerizing tender and harrowing account of coming of age in a wildly imaginative loving but fatally wounded family.