One Hundred Years of Marriage

"The House After It was Leveled," the first story of this novel in stories, opens in Chisom, Oklahoma, in 1960 with Alice Brady, wife, mother, and good Methodist, collapsed under the weight of a severe depression. A lifetime of silence and suppressed anger has finally overcome this strong woman. This story is told from the point of view of Alice's nineteen-year-old daughter, Patricia, who has to piece together evidence from family lore and overheard conversations to understand why her parents, the short-fused Cecil Brady, and the conflict-phobic Alice, chose each other. At the end of this first story Patricia's twelve-year-old brother, Ernest, asks her to explain their parents' marriage.Ernest's question begins the pattern of this book which doesn't provoke the reader to ask what happens next so much as to ask, what happened in the past that overcame all good sense to influence the marriage decisions of the women in this family.Alice Brady's choice of a mate is dramatized...