A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, sisters who grow up haphazardly under the care of various aunts both competent and eccentric. Their family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone, which is set on a glacial lake, the same lake where the sisters’ grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

Author biography

Marilynne Robinson is the author the novels Gilead – winner of the Pulitzer Prize – and two books of non-fiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop