Loved this book. A story of how one horrible event can change the entire lives of so many people.

This is my 2nd reading of the book, and it holds up very well. The writing is beautiful and evocative. As the author intends, you really do get inside the heads of the two main people, Alice and Howard. Through the first-person narrative you see them dealing with the world, making mistakes, trying to do the best they can, acknowledging their flaws, and maybe (only maybe) moving on toward some level of happiness.

The plot involves a few unfortunate coincidences, but it shows how precarious our hold on "normal" life can be, especially if we are outsiders in our community. It's a reminder during Covid times that disruption happens all the time, though in this book it's almost totally little things over which the participants had control that do them in.

To begin, Alice and Howard are married after knowing each other only a few months because she got pregnant. Though both are college grads, Howard's goal is to become a dairy farmer, and Alice takes a family inheritance and Howard a loan from his mom and they buy 400 acres in Wisconsin. They're near Racine, which, while not a particularly wealthy city at the time, is nonetheless incurring the suburban sprawl that was common in the 1980s and 1990s. Their farm is on the edge of one of those new developments, thus isolating them from their neighbors while also making them highly visible outsiders.

Alice has two kids, ages 5 and 3. She works part-time as a school nurse to bring in cash to balance the struggling dairy operation. Life is hard and certainly has no luxuries, but Howard revels in his work, and Alice appreciates the solitude and beauty of the farm. Alice has one friend, Theresa. They exchange babysitting duties on Mondays for four girls, of which the oldest is 5 years old. One summer day, Theresa drops off the girls. Alice forgets to lock the screen door, and Theresa's 2-year-old wanders out the front door and drowns in the pond.

As if the horror of that incident isn't enough, another tragedy strikes Alice a month later. While she's basically out of her mind in grief and guilt -- including one public incident when she fled from the funeral for the dead Lizzy -- Alice is accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy who she cared for as a nurse. She hates the kid, who takes up a lot of her time, is angry and clearly disturbed, and who has a mother who seems not to care. Once, in exasperation, Alice smacked the boy on his face. So while she knows she's not the greatest school nurse in the world, she's not a child molester.

Alice is arrested and held in jail for three months while Howard tries to manage the farm and two distraught daughters. Theresa helps him for a few weeks, but everyone else in the town shuns him and Alice, as they assume they are guilty because they are different. Eventually, Howard sells the beloved farm to raise money for Alice's bail and to pay their attorney. Also, he realizes almost immediately upon the death of Lizzy, not to mention the arrest, that the town will never accept them.

The story continues with a look at Alice's life in jail, a surreal and warped experience, and then the trial. In the end, Alice is not convicted, but she, Howard and their kids have moved away, bruised and lonely and scared. In my mind (at least), it's unclear if they will stay together as a family.

As I noted above, the story is beautifully written. The author captures the feeling and sight and smells of the farm, with just enough about the hardship to make it feel real. Alice's daughters aren't particularly nice, as they bicker between themselves constantly, and her older daughter is a whiner and volatile. Alice barely keeps it together herself, as she lost her mother at a young age and was raised by an aunt, while her emotionally distant father worked himself to death by the time she went to college. And then her aunt died as well. All Alice ever wanted was the security of a family, and she barely has it, as she's temperamentally unlike her stoic husband and unlike the conventional people in the town. Over and over, you see her make decisions that you know are wrong, that will show her in a bad light, and you want to scream: Stop it!. But she can't.

About 2/3 of the book is told from Alice's viewpoint. But another 1/3 is told from Howard's, basically the period when he's caring for the girls while Alice is in jail. It turns out he's less stoic and has more emotions than Alice realizes -- another tragedy in the story, as they never do understand each other on that level. Unlike Alice, he's more willing to settle for half a loaf, as the farm would be enough for him even without friends and much financial stability. But he realizes that he has responsibilities bigger than his desires, and he sacrifices for the overall good. But sadly, neither he nor Alice can express this well, and they just go on living a bruised life.

I'd also like to remark on the jail section. Alice writes about the bewildering experience, the monotony, the ever-present potential for danger. She writes about how it's never dark enough or quiet enough to sleep well, how the food is unbearably awful, and that everyone in jail has moments of grace and savvy. It's a very moving section, and I found the dialect of the mostly Black and white-trash women to be effective, but I realize in today's era it might be considered an unacceptable leap for a White author to make.

The end of the book is the weakest. The trial section goes on too long for my taste, and it's too clinical. The author is trying to put the nail in the coffin on the child abuse allegations that arose widely in the 1980s and were proven to be hoaxes. She shows how this happens, as an outsider woman is charged by a disturbed boy because his mother dislikes the woman; then other kids pile on, and the families in the school get riled up for a witch trial. And it's all a lie. While the author is right in condemning the parents and the flawed child advocacy system, it went on too long in almost a legalistic way.

And then, ironically, with the trial concluded I found that the ending of the book was not too legalistic but too maudlin. It went in the opposite direction from the case trial legalisms to a hard-to-follow mystical commentary on life and relationships. Given that one of the points in the book is that neither Alice nor Howard are religious (and that this helped to set them apart from their neighbors), I didn't quite follow the purpose. I understand that when one experiences traumas such as happened to Alice that one might look for solace in the world beyond reality. But that part didn't quite fit with her statements that she knows that life is a series of coincidences that pile up to become whatever happens.

Hamilton is very wordy, but she knows what to do with language. She creatively describes the scenery and the people, and the internal dialogue can be quite good. You tell the difference between Alice-text and Howard-text quite easily and she has successfully created two fully developed main characters.

Unfortunately, the book is wall of text followed by wall of text. I thought initially that I was enjoying the book, but about halfway through, I lost interest. I figured I'd just finish it, though, since I'd made it that far.

For the first half of the book, I liked Howard – solid, dependable, even-keeled – but by the second half, I disliked him intensely. Alice is tolerable, if a little out there. Even so, by midway through the book, I didn't empathize with any of the characters, except maybe Theresa.

The premise behind the story is real-life scary: that children (and adults) can accuse someone of abuse, with the result that "innocent until proven guilty" is essentially discarded. Even if Alice was cleared of any wrongdoing, she would still – unjustifiably – be regarded with suspicion by the community, all on the basis of an unfounded accusation.

The novel begins with a child's tragic death, so I did not want to read it until it was selected by a book club. The characters are fascinating as they grow, suffer and change. The writing is moving and perceptive. I will look for more of her work.

I'd actually give it 4 stars for writing/prose, 3 or 3-1/2 for the story itself. Jane Hamilton is an extraordinarily accomplished writer. Though I know some readers didn't particularly like her writing style, I found it very rich, engaging and thoughtful. The languid, descriptive pace helped set the stage and maintain the tone of this very "interior" novel. It was also a good counterpoint to the terrific cascade of events that made up the story line, very effectively conveying the sense of Alice's been swept along by events that totally perplexed her. The combination of sensitive, insightful prose with the ordinariness of the characters really helped drive home the novel's central message about how easily one's world can be shattered by a slight turn of everyday events.

My major complaint is with the inaccessibility of some of the characters, particularly Howard. I could never develop much sympathy for him and found him generally somewhat unlikely. Then again, maybe that was the point. On the whole, though, I was quite impressed with the book. A very thoughtful treatise on isolation, community and the fragility of "ordinary life."

an unintentional re-read (got to ~pg 10 when I realized everything sounded familiar but I couldn't remember the plot), Alice is a whimsical narrator who contrasts her husband's more reserved voice and I couldn't really tell if I liked either one of them very much

Some reviewers say that this is a depressing book; I did not find it at all so. The relationships are substantial and strong, the conflict dramatic and realistic. I loved the tone and atmospherics: farm life, small town, child-rearing, guilt.

This was a well written story, but a very difficult read for me. Very depressing from the very beginning. I believe in finishing any book that I begin, so for the past week I have picked the book up reluctantly. Maybe trying to read this book, while staying home day after day, during Covid-19, wasn't the best choice. The author is wonderful with words, descriptions, and feelings. And yet, due to the nature of the book, it will be a hard book to recommend.

This book was very melancholy, with some parts that dragged and some parts that were beautifully poetic, but it was mostly just sad. Which is fine for me--I don't expect every novel to be happy-go-lucky. I was reeling when the baby drowned at the beginning of the novel and thought to myself, "well, it can't get any worse than this," but it sure enough did!

I had a hard time warming up to Alice (?), the main character, because she seemed, to borrow a line from "South Park," to be surrounded by a cloud of smug. While she seemed to be preoccupied that everyone was judgmental of her, she was just as guilty of judging others, and of being so proud of how much more evolved and genuine she was than those around her. I think her epiphany came when she was in jail. There was some resolution and I feel that she gained some humility while there. So maybe that's why Hamilton created the tension of Alice's paranoid narcissism at the beginning--to make it feel more resolved at the end.

Even though I've pointed out what I thought were weak spots, this novel stuck with me long after I read it. It is definitely one I will not forget about, and might even read again in a few years.

Challenging, wonderful, sad, and remarkable all partly describe this novel. Scary, also, if you consider how fragile our security may actually be. Any time a perfectly normal family can explode in the way this one has, we should sit up and take notice, and be aware of how tough life can turn. I did struggle from time to time reading this, as it’s not sugar-coated nor treated lightly, when first one disaster and then another strikes. And the author wisely broke the narration up into three parts: two parts by the protagonist that are bookends to her husband’s central portion. I felt a bit of relief to leave Alice’s first section, moving to Howard when the going got really tough. His voice is quite different and a new way to see all that had happened up to that point. But finishing the story, Alice helps us see how very complex we humans can be, from elementary school kids to experienced lawyers and jail inmates to best friends. I was glad to have this book given to me by a good friend, and I am a bit better of a person for having read it.

I forced myself to finish this book. I think that if one picks this book to read, one should read maybe 4 chapters and then skip to the end and read maybe two chapters. That way you will get the whole story without the unnecessary descriptions of things that did not contribute to the main plot. It seems the author was writing the book according to a formula.

I found this book at a used book sale and almost put it back since it was an Oprah pick back when she was doing her book club in the 90s - and I haven't liked very many of her selections. But I'm glad I didn't. It was not a "feel good" book but it pulled me in and I wanted to see how it would all work out at the end. It brought to mind how circumstances and conversations made under stress can come back to haunt you. Along with a justice system that is a mystery to most people who believe it is fair.