Book overview
From the award-winning author of In the Field, an inquiry into grief, love, housing affordability, and the transformative power of art, in the story of a young theater director who, after her mother's death, stages Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in her childhood home.
Gwen Rivlin moves back home to Philadelphia in the wake of her mother's death, and into the big, shabby house with a turret where they both grew up. Her friends tell her it's too expensive for a 27-year-old theater director, and too suburban if she has any hopes of keeping her social life alive.
Gwen is determined to stay, even when her schemes to make the house more affordable run afoul of the single-family zoning laws and earn the disapproval of her neighbors. To smooth things over, and to assuage her own grief, Gwen stages a production of The Cherry Orchard inside the turret house. She casts friends, coworkers from the local coffee shop, and various community members in Anton Chekhov's play about a family struggling to hold onto its own real estate.
Through the creation of this beautiful and transitory work of art, Gwen heals old breaches, reevaluates her relationship with her difficult mother, and weaves a new, non-traditional family for herself.