A FAMILY PLACE

A world-weary, middle-aged novelist (Dangler, 1980, etc.) and sportswriter retreats to the wilds of Nova Scotia to build a house and rebuild his family. In the summer of 1989, Gaines and his wife Patricia, a painter, were separated and talking divorce. After three children and 30 years of marriage, they had grown apart—victims, not unlike Scott and Zelda, of the bitch goddess of success: Charles's first novel had recently been made into a movie, and he and Patricia were jet-setting about the country, flirting with movie stars and growing increasingly estranged from each other and the simple life they had once shared in rural New Hampshire. Although Gaines sidesteps the issue of whether he and Patricia were actually unfaithful, he nevertheless draws a compelling portrait of two people bent on destroying their marriage. After Patricia bottoms out and gives away all her jewelry, including her wedding and engagement rings, to street-people in New York, she decides to give the marriage another chance. In 1990, the Gaineses purchased 160 acres in Nova Scotia; the following summer, Charles, Patricia, their three grown children, and a handful of friends returned to build, with their own hands, their ``family place.'' Weaving together details of construction and carpentry with personal revelations about marriage and midlife, the narrative works as both a factual account of housebuilding and a poetic testimony of love lost and found. Neither sappy nor self-indulgent, and as compelling as Tracy Kidder's House: a beautifully written memoir sure to win Gaines a new following. (First printing of 25,000)