The Keepers of the House

Name: The Keepers of the House
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Shirley Ann Grau
ISBN: 9798350873085

Author: Shirley Ann Grau

Narrator: Allyson Johnson

Unabridged: 10 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/19/2023

Categories: Fiction, Historical Fiction, African American & Black Fiction

Synopsis

A "beautifully written" Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family's secrets in the American South (The Atlantic Monthly).

Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Over the course of a century, the Howlands accumulated a fortune, fought for secession, and helped rebuild the South, establishing themselves as one of the most respected families in the state. But that history means little to Abigail Howland.

The inheritor of the Howland manse, Abigail hides the long-buried secret of her grandfather's thirty-year relationship with his African American mistress. Her fortunes reverse when her family's mixed-race heritage comes to light and her community—locked in the prejudices of the 1960s—turns its back on her. Faced with such deep-seated racism, Abigail is pushed to defend her family at all costs.

A "novel of real magnitude," The Keepers of the House is an unforgettable story of family, tradition, and racial injustice set against the richly drawn backdrop of the American South (Kirkus Reviews).

About Shirley Ann Grau

Shirley Ann Grau is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of nine novels and short story collections, whose work is set primarily in her native South. Grau was raised in Alabama, and Louisiana, and many of her novels document the broad social changes of the Deep South during the twentieth century, particularly as they affected African Americans. Grau's first novel, The Hard Blue Sky, about the descendants of European pioneers living on an island off the coast of Louisiana, established her as a master of vivid description, both for characters and locale, a style she maintained throughout her career. Her public profile rose during the civil rights movement, when her dynastic novel Keepers of the House, which dealt with race relations in Alabama, earned her a Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on October 22, 2022

This sweeping saga won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for its depiction of a dynastic white family in rural Alabama at a time when prejudice and racism lived cheek-by-jowl with oppression and hypocrisy. No sooner had the curtain lifted on the cryptic opening chapter than I was purring at the innovative......more

Goodreads review by Dave on May 03, 2025

Here's a funny thing. I'd been looking at this book for a couple of years harbouring the fear that I may find it boring. More fool me. The theme of racial disharmony in the South is a well trodden path, but what Shirley Ann Grau delivers is fundamentally a love story. The writing is beautiful. Set in......more

Goodreads review by Carol on May 27, 2022

A 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner. Years ago, I had this novel and planned to read it, but I did not. I am so glad that I finally picked it up again. The setting is rural Alabama and covers mostly three generations of the Howland family, pillars of their community. The beginning unspools slowly as the au......more

Goodreads review by JimZ on August 18, 2020

Wonders will never cease. This Is not the first time I was reading a novel and 1) wondering why on earth I was reading such a boring novel and 2) swearing at myself for continuing to read it when it clearly was a DNF book, and when was I ever going to learn, because if not now, when? And in this cas......more