![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() His iron hand crushes his wife and grown children, and when he decides that Maggie's parents and their soon-to-be-five offspring should move from their slightly shabby Irish Catholic Bronx suburb to a large house in Westchester which he has purchased for them, tension between her parents escalates and Maggie's loyalties are tested. Domineering, irascible, intolerant John Scanlan looks down on both Pope John XXII and President Kennedy for deviating from traditional Catholic doctrine. To sensitive Maggie Scanlan, the summer when she turns 13 is ``the time when her whole life changed.'' Aware that her father, Tommy, had outraged the wealthy Scanlan clan by marrying the daughter of an Italian cemetery caretaker, Maggie is a bridge between her ``outcast'' mother and her grandfather, whose favorite she is. Her first novel is solid proof that she is equally discerning and skillful as a writer of fiction. Readers of her ``Life in the 30s'' column in the New York Times (collected in Living Out Loud ) know Quindlen as an astute observer of family relationships. ![]()
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