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Lombardo’s character-driven, eventful, tumultuous, witty, serious, gregarious, tragic, and infectious domestic dramady of a big Chicago family kept me fastened to the pages of this big, buoyant book. Yes, it is a tome, but once you are installed in the story, it pulls you naturally along. I cared and cringed and chuckled and cried with each of the four sisters and their parents (and then there’s the third gen of kids). Each character was individualized and any one of them could have leaped off the pages. How they lived and loved became all-important to me as I folded myself into their days and years. They crept into my heart; it was like being a member of their family.

Marilyn Connelly and David Sorensen met in the mid-70s during their undergrad days in Chicago and knew instinctively that they were meant to be husband and wife. David became a family physician, and Marilyn left university when she got pregnant. The novel covers 40 years of their lives, as their family grew large with four daughters--Wendy, Violet, Liza, and the baby, Grace--fifteen years younger than Wendy. Violet and Wendy are a year apart--Irish twins, the sisters who were the closest and developed a love-hate relationship. Liza was considered the middle child, and Grace was born (on purpose, but everyone thought she was their Catholic accident) in 1993. The current year is 2016, but the novel moves back and forth in time, mounting little mysteries and hints and integrating interlocking narratives. Everyone has a storyline, independently and collectively. And that includes the loose cannon, Jonah, given up for adoption by Violet as an infant and, at age 15, has resurfaced, to Violet’s dismay.

Wendy, the guarded, troubled, and most irreverent, sustains the lion’s share of tragedies. She keeps the wine close at hand and others at arm’s length, and is most combative with Violet. Violet has control issues, and has difficulty taking risks; she resists interference in her perfectly chiseled life with her husband and two young sons. Liza, now pregnant and a successful professor, has a severely depressed boyfriend who alternately sobs and sleeps. Gracie, after graduating from Reed, in Portland, subsists in a boring job and tells an ever-ripening fiction to her family. She’s confined her options and widened her lies.

“Nobody was who they appeared to be; everyone was struggling; money didn’t make a difference…� And, as Gracie believes, “No one…would ever regard her with the same enthusiastic awe as her mother; the same feverish pride as her father.� As the story evolves, it is clear that the author created a prism for everyone’s fractured perceptions, revolving memories, missed opportunities, and mixed blessings. The shifting impressions and vacillating notions circle around and veer in sloping lines, caterwauling, twisting, tipping and turning.

Colleagues, outsiders, and even their children assume that David and Marilyn’s love together is effortless perfection. Nobody would truly comprehend their nuanced history and complexity, the intimacy of joining together before they could ever be alone. But they agree--it's the most fun they ever had. And each child has a shared and personal history that we glimpse through a window or gaze through a curtain. Resounding, the spirit of the narrative stirs with fractious dialogue and unfiltered warmth. It was difficult to leave this family at the close of the story.