num_pages: 352
description: Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt’s final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer’s ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.
language: English
title: The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
titlecomplete: The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
genres: Autobiography, Architecture, History, Travel, American History, Biography Memoir, Family, Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 3557
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Massachusetts Book Award
category: Nonfiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Scribner