Half the house
Subtitle: a memoir
By: Richard Hoffman.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 175
Subjects: Hoffman, Richard, 1949-  -- Childhood and youth.; Working class families -- Pennsylvania -- Allentown -- Case studies.; Sexually abused children -- Pennsylvania -- Allentown -- Biography.; Allentown (Pa.) -- Biography.
Description: Half the House is the story of a family repeatedly visited by death and suffering; of a boy burdened with a terrible secret; of a father and son estranged by grief and anger.

Richard Hoffman recalls his boyhood in postwar, blue collar Allentown, PA, a world of breweries and ballfields, by turns idyllic and brutal. He depicts his family's struggles to maintain their dignity while caring for two of his brothers, who are terminally ill, and reveals how, under such circumstances, hope and denial become one; love and rage are inextricably fused; and silence and unreality threaten.