In 1935, Ed Beane loses his job and he, wife Dorothy, their two children, and Ed's widowed mother are forced to take refuge with Dorothy's mother on the family farm. While not ignoring problems, Bittle carefully details the way family members support each other in this time of crisis. A series of vignettes focus on family celebrations--Thanksgiving, Christmas, graduation, weddings--as the Beanes move through the Depression years to face World War II. There are no melodramatic plotlines here to hold interest; even the main characters are not developed in great depth. But Bittle has a good eye for the significant detail, and her small, competently crafted novel quietly reminds us of a time when the family was a major influence and a source of strength.-- Beth Ann Mills, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Set between 1936 and the WW II years in a small Massachusetts farm town, this warmhearted novel celebrates the old-fashioned virtues of home and family. Dorothy and Ed Beane, plain good folk, share a comfortable Holyoke house with children Ruthie and Virgil and querulous, aging Granny Beane. His hopes of college having been dashed by the Depression, Ed has become a machinist; when he loses his job, they accept the offer of Dorothy's proudly correct mother to live under her roof. Ed labors to restore the dilapidated farm, but the adjustment is severe (``It was hard to feel beholden''). Furthermore, Dorothy's inhibitions in her mother's house threaten the couple's sex life, and Ed feels the lure of Vera, a spinster cousin, and increasingly cheers himself with a whiskey bottle hidden in the barn. Money anxieties--the need to ask Dorothy's mother for every dollar--further imperil the Beanes' equilibrium. Ed becomes a live-in chauffeur for a former bootlegger in a distant town, enforcing a separation. The war intrudes: Virgil goes overseas, and Ruthie marries her soldier fiance far from home. Despite the measure of grief, the family makes hard but satisfying choices. Bittle, who evokes an intimate sense of homespun joys, has written for Good Housekeeping and Family Circle. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
A simple, bare-bones story about one family's struggle to stay together during the Great Depression. Bittle, a senior editor at Redbook, is self-conscious in her narration, resulting in bumpy passages that sacrifice complexity of character and plot to historical accuracy--her period details are right on target. But the unleavened quality of the story nevertheless works to the advantage of its subject by underscoring the daily oppression that the once-comfortable characters suffer under the onslaught of economic disaster. Ed Beane, a machinist, is forced to move his wife and two children from their cozy New England town to his mother-in-law's old dairy farm when he loses his job. The domineering Mrs. Howard makes life unbearable for the couple, who eventually lose their son to war, their daughter to a distant locale, and almost each other. The story neatly, if predictably, comes full circle as family tensions ease and life's sorrows mellow the couple. Interesting for its insights into social history as portrayed through a not untypical Depression-era family. ~--Mary Banas
