Raised in a primitive one-room farmhouse with no indoor plumbing, the fourth of five children, Catherine Marenghi begins her life in poverty and isolation. She leaves home at the age of seventeen. A decade later, she is a successful journalist with the means to buy her family their first decent house. But the past will not be put to rest so easily. Catherine unravels a web of long-buried family secrets, and a terrible betrayal that robbed her family of the home that was rightfully theirs. And she finally uncovers the story her parents never shared: the gladiolus farm that was once their dream. At once lyrical and raw, unflinching in its detail, Glad Farm is an iconic American story of renewal and reinvention, and the mythic power of a house to define our destiny.

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members.