If Tolstoy is right that "Happy families are all alike," the Irish-Catholic Blessing family might stand in for a universe of families. In a rich novel of family stories, Elise Juska (One for Sorrow, One for Joy) chronicles the goings and comings of this large close-knit Philadelphia family--dinner by dinner, marriage by marriage, generation by generation. Only when third-generation Abby goes off to college does she discover that not everyone grows up in family like hers: a family that annually vacations together on the Jersey Shore, a family that gathers for holiday dinners to exchange "mild conversations about ordinary things" and share "predictable, unpretentious ham salads and roast beef, potatoes in hollowed-out brown skins, cobbled chunks of pickle wrapped in ham, speared with toothpicks," a family that takes its measure in its "response to sad things."
If the Blessings are not a blissfully "happy family," they are also decidedly not the dysfunctional family of Franzen's The Corrections or that of St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels. The Blessings have their struggles with disease, dementia, divorce and death, but always they close ranks in mutual support. They are at their best when difficult circumstances create "a determined stirring: to be on the cusp of a crisis, to rise to it, as a family." In time, an older Abby comes to discover the value of family just being there, that "if everybody is ok, it is enough." With a keen eye for detail and character, Juska shows us that, Tolstoy notwithstanding, a happy family can be happy in its own way and make for great storytelling. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.