auntieannie

I picked up this book because I read a recommendation from Julia Glass, author of 3 Junes. That intrigued me, so I started the book before Christmas, put it aside and finished it up mid-January. It was an engaging book and the characters were mostly well-drawn, but it left me scratching my head a bit. Not entirely satisfying in the end. Stephen and Angela meet, marry, have a daughter Dulcie. They are living on a farm in Iowa, but Angela wants more than farm life. Stephen feels deeply rooted to farm life and taking care of his animals. Angela leaves Stephen, takes Dulcie and pursues law school. She drops out after a semester, but never goes back to Stephen and moves to California with Dulcie. The story is taking place when Dulcie is 16 and an out-of-control teen, with flashbacks to earlier times in their lives. Angela decides to have Dulcie spend a summer with her father to get her away from bad influences with her friends in CA. Stephen has her current girlfriend Leah moving in with her teen daughter, Roxy. They are from Chicago, but coming to live on the farm in Iowa. While the setup is that you think Dulcie will corrupt Roxy who seems much younger and more innocent, that is not what happens. Instead, Roxy is attracted to Will, a born-agan 17 year old. Roxy, 15, becomes pregnant, and Will's parents support their getting married. Leah and Stephen do not wish this, but eventually that is what happens. All of this sort of subtly works on Dulcie somehow. At the end of the summer, Dulcie comes back to California and is still a troubled teen. Angela is now pregnant at 40 with Quin (her 2nd husband's) baby. Quin has been a ladies' man, but is overcome with becoming a father and wants to make his marriage work. There are various other characters, some of whom are truly bizarre: Sdriana/Adrienne, who Quin is sleeping with at the beginning, and her really strange neighbors, Judy Storm and Adam who ride motorcycles, keep Dobermans, and get involved with Dulcie. In Iowa, there is Ron, Stephen's drunk sidekick and his lover who leaves him, the Spainard (Lois). Most of the characters are believable, but at times it's all so strange and I couldn't figure out why she was introducing all this stuff. Like the lost Amish child in the field, with the parents in the overturned car in the river that Stephen and Will's father rescue -- why was that there? Eventually, Will and Rox have their baby, who is severely premature and handicapped, and who dies after a few days. Will loses his faith over this, but Will and Rox stay together as a young married couple living in his family's home, while Rox finishes high school and Will becomes a farmer. Dulcie ends up coming back to Iowa to live by her choice, which isn't really clear, except that she has some kind of crisis over the baby's death, and a desire to become somewhat more normal again. Angela has her baby offscreen, and things seem settled down between her and Quin. Stephen and Angela have their unrequited love carry on - not really sure why their marriage didn't work out, as well as Angela's lingering feelings for Stephen's brother Andrew, who she was originally attracted to before she started going with Stephen instead.I was absorbed in the story and the people while I was reading it, but I was hoping for a sum that was greater than the parts and didn't get that from this book.