House of Happy Endings

Howard Garis, creator of the famed Uncle Wiggily series, along with his wife, Lilian, were phenomenally productive writers of popular children's series--including The Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift--from the turn of the century to the 1950s. In a large, romantic house in Amherst, Massachusetts, Leslie Garis, her two brothers, and their parents and grandparents aimed to live a life that mirrored the idyllic world the elder Garises created nonstop. But inside The Dell--where Robert Frost often sat in conversation over sherry, and stories appeared to spring from the very air--all was not right.

Roger Garis's inability to match his parents' success in his own work as playwright, novelist, and magazine writer led to his conviction that he was a failure as father, husband, and son, and eventually deepened into mental illness characterized by raging mood swings, drug abuse, and bouts of debilitating and destructive depression. House of Happy Endings is Leslie Garis's mesmerizing, tender, and harrowing account of coming of age in a wildly imaginative, loving, but fatally wounded family.

Author: Leslie Garis
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 09/02/2008
Pages: 339
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780374531584

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 10/12/2008 pg. 32

About the Author

Leslie Garis, author of House of Happy Endings, has written on literary subjects for many national magazines and newspapers. She is best known for New York Times Magazine profiles of such writers as Georges Simenon, Rebecca West, John Fowles, Harold Pinter, Joan Didion, and Susan Sontag.

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