The House of Grins

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Robert Fitzgerald has a dream. Yearning for the stability of an ideal of family life that has always eluded him he moves into town fresh from personal tragedy but determined to create a new kind of family unit. Life-affirming and unconventional resolved to learn from his past mistakes he buys a rambling old house and sets up an alternative living arrangement. He offers his housemates what he hopes is a source of support and connection free from the traumas and strains of people bound together by blood.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Into his home--the House of Grins--come people seeking refuge from the most profound conflicts of contemporary life: Dennis a solitary young man on the mend from his second nervous breakdown caught between healing solitude and desperate loneliness in the grip of an unrequited (and lethal) love; Gene a self-absorbed former minister now immersed in a New Age quest for the spiritual life who celebrates freedom but flees from the demands of adult obligations; Martina forced to choose between her career ambitions and love with a respectable and altogether dull suitor bent on making her a wife and stepmother; and Brooke an artist struggling with her own confusion and grim family history who enters a too-intense relationship with Robert that threatens the outwardly-perfect family life she has so carefully crafted for herself and her husband.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>By the end of the turbulent year they spend together all of their relationships realign as Robert learns painful lessons about why his dream has eluded him.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This compelling compassionate and wryly comic new novel explores the urges that drive people out of--and back into--traditional family life.</span></p>