family

Mona Chang, the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, fully embraces the ideals of freedom and converts to Judaism in the first of many rebellions she stages in her search for individualism while growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

Spencer, a grown man struggling with the impending death of his mother, tries to make peace with the memory of the childhood accident that claimed his older brother's life, and the knowledge that his cousin William is really his younger brother, given to his childless aunt and uncle as a newborn.

Follows the young narrator's childhood in Northern Ireland during the 1950s as he learns about the pain and ambiguity that come with maturity and as he becomes aware of the corruption of power in his own family and society.

Weaves the parallel stories of two Mexican-American families and two countries. Describes the volatile bootlegger who would become the author's father and the beautiful Lupe, his mother.

Abby Santerre, infatuated with her uncle Jamie since he came to entertain her when she was a seven-year-old chicken pox patient, falls into an incestuous affair with him years later when he arrives once again to help her deal with her grief over her father's death, and in an effort to save herself, she writes an autobiographical novel that everyone in the family denies is true--but which causes them all to make changes in their lives.

The life of Jewel Hilburn, a mother living with her husband and children in the backwoods of Mississippi in 1943, undergoes a drastic change when her sixth child, Brenda Kay, is born without the gift of common sense.

Describes the historical and contemporary lives of Indian women, their religious, family, and public lives, and issues and controversies they face, and discusses the work of individual Indian women who have made a difference in their society or the world.

Gretel Samuelson grows up in a suburban neighborhood with her best friend Jill, struggling to deal with the everyday disappointments and tragedies that occur on the way to adulthood.

Follows the Pyncheon family who lived for generations under a dead man's curse until his death restored their house.

Biologist Peter Campbell, attempting to revitalize his life and marriage, decides to bring his wife and young daughter along when he goes to conduct research in the remote village of Albini in Papua New Guinea, but when the child becomes immersed in the culture of the natives, the ties that bind the family begin to come undone.