The ocean house
Subtitle: stories
By: Mary-Beth Hughes
Contributors: Recorded Books, Inc
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published: 2021
Place of publication: [S.l.]
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
ISBN-13: 9780802157546
Subjects: American Short stories; Short stories; Nouvelles américaines; FICTION / Short Stories (single author)
Description: Faith, a mother of two young children, Cece and Connor, is in need of summer childcare. As a member of a staid old beach club in her town and a self-made business consultant, she is appalled when her brother-in-law sends her an unruly, ill-mannered teenager named Lee-Ann who appears more like a wayward child than competent help. What begins as a promising start to a redemptive relationship between the two ends in a tragedy that lands Faith in a treatment facility, leveled by trauma. Years later, Faith and her mother, Irene, visit Cece in college. A fresh-faced student with a shaved head and new boyfriend, Cece has become a force of her own. Meanwhile, her grandmother, Irene, is in the early stages of dementia. She slips in and out of clarity, telling lucid tales of her own troubled youth. Faith dismisses her mother's stories as bids for attention. The three generations of women hover between wishful innocence and a more knowing resilience against the cruelty that hidden secrets of the past propel into the present. Including stories from an array of characters orbiting Faith's family, The Ocean House weaves an exquisite world of complicated family tales on the Jersey Shore. In ever-tender and elegant prose, Mary-Beth Hughes masterfully explores the emotional consequences of loss and the saving graces of love.
Table of contents: title: The ocean house; title: Outcast; title: The healing zone; title: Here you are; title: The elixer; title: Dove; title: The pitch; title: Summerspace; title: Fragile X; title: How the poets learned to love her; title: California.