Few authors portray the emotional landscape of the American family as sympathetically as Anna Quindlen. Her eighth novel, Miller's Valley, is Mary Margaret Miller's story, as a daughter, wife and mother in the rural Pennsylvania town that shares her name.
The novel opens with the adult Mary and her mother joining their neighbors at a town meeting, where an official pressures the people to accept a government plan to flood their region. After the brief prologue, the novel follows "Mimi," beginning in childhood and into years beyond the first scene, with the specter of the dam looming. The Miller's Valley townspeople carry on, resisting and eventually dealing with the impending obliteration of their land. But like a "drowned town," many truths about the families in Miller's Valley lie hidden.
Mary's parents don't have much time to ponder the town's fate. "My mother was a nurse and my father was a fix-it man. But if they'd ever applied for passports, which they never did, where it asked for profession they probably would have written 'farmer.' " Obedient and studious, Mary earns college scholarships, but postpones her plans when her reckless, charismatic brother returns from Vietnam with a self-destructive volatility, and her beloved dad suffers a stroke. Confused by first love and family loyalty, Mary nevertheless pursues her dream of studying science, and comes back to Miller's Valley as a respected professional.
Quindlen captures an era with spot-on detail--roadside sweet corn stands, white patent shoes, local beer from cans--as well as the timeless themes of family love and controversial government edicts. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco