The Dutch House

In 1946, after the Second World War, Cyril Conroy, a poor man, suddenly strikes it rich with a stroke of luck. His first purchase is an opulent estate in the Philadelphia suburbs, USA, formerly owned by a now-bankrupt Dutch family. Conroy moves into the new house with his wife, Elna, and their daughter, the confident and protective Maeve, where Danny, the narrator of this story, will later be born.

What would have been a pleasant change of life turns into the downfall of the entire family, in a kind of lost paradise. Elna, unable to cope with the luxuries of the estate and its servants, ends the marriage and flees, leaving the children behind.

Later, a stepmother, Andrea, a young widow with two daughters, arrives at the estate, and the two siblings, Maeve and Danny, are gradually alienated until they are eventually expelled from their own home, returned to poverty, with only each other to turn to in coping with the loss, the humiliation, and the anger, until one day they can finally confront those who abandoned them.

The Dutch House, a narrative spanning five decades, is a family saga, a slow, painful journey with characters who will stay with us forever, like a fairy tale turned upside down.