A House in Earnest

A House in Earnest is a story of alternative forms of love and commitment that evolved for a generation coming to terms with the aftermath of Vietnam. On April 30, 1975 - the day Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese - Deborah Getsinger meets by chance a twenty-nine-year-old veteran, Christy Mahon, who is spending the day in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the hometown of a friend he saw blown up by a land mine. After an erotic encounter, nineteen-year-old Deborah follows the haunted and edgy veteran to the White Mountains, where he teaches history at Franconia College and lives in a commune whose most vibrant and idealistic days have passed. From this beginning, this novel follows the intertwined lives of five people during the final twenty-five years of the twentieth century.
Deborah and Christy marry and form an extended family that includes their son, Ian, Deborah's friend, Sonia, and Sonia's daughter, Patience. In time Christy becomes more isolated and obsessed, as if human relationships pose the same threat as a live grenade, liable to explode at any moment. Through the years, Christy, Deborah, Sonia, and their children move in and out of each other's lives, facing changes in the culture and themselves. When the "family" gathers for a Christmas in the mountains the adults reflect on the choices they made, and how those choices shaped their lives and those of their now-grown children.


Genre: Literary Fiction