Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1965,
The Keepers of the House is Shirley Ann Grau's masterwork, a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.
Entrenched on the same land since the early 1800s, the Howlands have, for seven generations, been pillars of their Southern community. Extraordinary family lore has been passed down to Abigail Howland, but not all of it. When shocking facts come to light about her late grandfather William's relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, the community is outraged, and quickly gathers to vent its fury on Abigail. Alone in the house the Howlands built, she is at once shaken by those who have betrayed her, and determined to punish the town that has persecuted her and her kin.
Morally intricate, graceful and suspenseful, The Keepers of the House has become a modern classic.
Review
"Each year, I reread three authors Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Shirley Ann Grau. No one else writes about the landscape of Louisiana as she does, but also about the landscape of bitter love and family dreams, of sex not as romance but as commerce and experiment and mystery, of people adrift in their lives and people so tethered to their own pieces of earth. Keepers of the House is a masterpiece of history and race and the fragile yet tenuous ownership of land and love." Susan Straight, author of the National Book Award Finalist Highwire Moon
Review
"A beautifully written book." Atlantic Monthly
About the Author
Grau lives in New Orleans and on Martha's Vineyard.