There's not a light-hearted, joyous moment to be found in this book. Even those moments that might seem joyous are actually tainted with a nostalgic sense of loss. So well-written is the book, so immersive, that it becomes, at one point, a drain on your emotional wellness.
The story begins with the pairing of the patriarch and matriarch of the Piper family, James and Materia, both from two different worlds but who find each other through chance. They marry extremely young, unable to deny the lusty desires of their youth because of the extremely conservative expectations of the era in which the story takes place years before the first World War. They elope and Materia is immediately estranged from her family, whom she never comes into contact again, all for a husband who, at first, adores her and tries to give her the world. But as the years pass between them, he finds that he grows tired of her dullness and the depression she develops from missing her family so. They do have three children together, however, all daughters -- their eldest, Kathleen, is James' pride and joy but he develops too close a bond with her, which forces a sort of rivalry to develop between Kathleen and Materia, and also forces James into the war because he believes only this distance from Kathleen will keep him from crossing any lines with her. Kathleen has a unique voice and so, once James returns from the war, still desiring a significant distance between them, he sends her to New York to train with a renowned opera vocalist. It is here that Kathleen meets the true love of her life -- a black woman named Rose whose skill at the piano keys proves the perfect accompaniment to Kathleen's soaring vocals. However, Rose's mother senses the relationship between her daughter and Kathleen and sends word to James in an attempt to break it up. Her plan succeeds, as James arrives in New York to find his daughter in the embrace of another woman -- he violently sends Rose on her way and, so very close to Kathleen in her most vulnerable moment, and while she is nude before him, he loses himself to the temptation he has fled from all these years and rapes her, impregnating her with twins to whom she gives birth at home in Cape Breton. Materia must cut Kathleen open in order to deliver the babies (a boy and a girl), and Kathleen bleeds to death, sending James into a never-ending spiral of despair that survives the rest of his life. Frances, just a child at the time, takes the newborn babies to the creek behind their house in an attempt to baptize them, and while the girl, Lily, survives, the boy, Ambrose, accidentally drowns. All James sees is Frances taking the babies into the water without any context -- he believes for most of his life that Frances intended to kill both of the babies, never knowing the intent behind her actions. And based on his explosive and violent reaction, Frances grows up believing she is a horrible person whose first significant actions in life were to try to drown her newborn niece and nephew. Materia, grieving for the death of her daughter and for the part she believes she played in it, cannot go on when her conscience is troubled and essentially commits suicide, leaving James alone, damaged from the war, to care for their two little girls on his own.
James and Materia's other two daughter's, Frances and Mercedes, become the apples of James' eyes. Mercedes, realizing more than any girl her age should, steps up to fill the void her mother left in their lives and essentially adopts the others, taking care of them as well as she's able -- she shops, cooks, cleans house, repairs their clothes, etc. She and Frances are inseparable, and she comes to view Frances as a sort of surrogate daughter. Tragically, she never marries and dedicates all of her focus onto her family. She becomes a teacher in her early adulthood at a Catholic school, earning a reputation for her callousness and inhospitable nature. While she loves Lily (mostly because she has to), Mercedes also hates her and sees her as a stain on her things and their existence.
Frances is the wild child of the bunch -- she is a tomboyish prankster who enjoys being mischievous and oftentimes goes overboard with her jokes, which are usually targeted at Lily, whom James continued caring for after Kathleen's death. James and Frances have a tense and violent relationship because James blames Frances for the death of his son and shows Lily preferential treatment, believing his own Frances to be a bad role model for his youngest daughter. On the other hand, Frances' likeness to Kathleen in regards to outward appearance and temperament tempt James again and he loses -- and it is a scene that Mercedes happens upon by accident, him raping his middle daughter. It is just the once, but Mercedes vows she will kill him before she allows it to happen again. Despite Frances' meanness towards Lily, she loves her beyond measure and, when she begins developing, takes a job at a speakeasy dancing, singing and selling her sexual services for money (though never sex itself in the traditional sense). And the more she makes, the more she's able to save, which she puts into a hidden place for Lily's future.
For some reason, Frances chooses the same black man who used to drive Kathleen all over Cape Breton, and -- even though he already has a wife and children -- takes him to a secluded place where only she and Lily know it is, and then she seduces and sleeps with him, with the intent of becoming pregnant. She DOES become pregnant and this seems to alter her entire personality -- she goes from wild, mischievous and crude to being overall silent, polite, helpful and finally, somehow, responsible. She immediately stops working at the speakeasy and takes more responsibilities over at home, especially the cooking. Mercedes actually mourns these changes and wants the days back from Frances' childhood, because in those days Mercedes was more a mother than a sister, and she enjoys this role, even if she was thrown into it.
James dies in his sleep sometime after the girls are all grown, and it is then Frances sees fit to give Lily all the money she's saved for her, telling her now's her chance to get out of Cape Breton and go wherever her heart leads her, which turns out to be to New York, to Rose's front door. By now, Rose is a big name in blues and jazz music and does so under the guise of being a man.
Frances has her baby but doesn't know that Mercedes has conspired with the sisters of the nunnery to take the child from Frances and have him adopted out to someone else, meanwhile telling Frances and everyone else in the family that he suffered a crib death shortly after being born. This throws Frances into a depression she seems to carry with her for the remainder of her life, and to cope, she develops her talent of cooking and cooking, and cooking so much that she gives it all away to whomever needs it most: the miners, the church, the schoolkids. And she still takes her walk along the beach the way she used to when she was anticipating the birth of her baby boy.
In the end, Lily is living with Rose, who hasn't a dollar to her name, and cleans churches for a living. One day, out of the blue, a young man shows up bearing a striking resemblance to Frances -- it is the son that was taken from her at birth. Upon Frances' death, Mercedes reached out to him and gave him the Family Tree she'd worked so carefully on over the years, and told him how to find Lily in Manhattan, who is only too happy to be once more amongst relatives. And here ends the heart-wrenching tale of the Pipers.
I found this gem of a book at a Salvation Army, never expecting it to easily become one of my favorites! Every now and then, you find authors whose way of combining words and describing significant events and experiences stick with you long after you've read the material, and this is definitely one of those books.
