Every family lives in an evolving story, told by all its members, inside a landscape of portentous events and characters. Their view of themselves is not shared by people looking from outside in—visitors, and particularly not relatives—for they have to see something pretty humdrum, even if, as in this case, the fecklessness they complain of is extreme.

After ten years of marriage, Sam and Henny Pollit find themselves with too many children, insufficient money, and an abundant loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children's adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny becomes a geyser of rage against her improvident husband. And, caught in the midst of it all, is Louisa, Sam's watchful eleven-year-old daughter.

Set in a country crippled by the Great Depression, this novel is a masterpiece of dysfunctional family life. Sam torments and manipulates his children in an esoteric world of his own imagining. Henny looks on desperately, all too aware of the madness at the root of her husband’s behavior. And Louie, the damaged, precocious adolescent girl at the center of their clashes, is the "ugly duckling" whose struggle will transfix contemporary readers.