Nova Scotia - History, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, Canadian Studies

A Family Place

Name: A Family Place
Author: Charles Gaines
ISBN: 9780425148785

by Charles Gaines

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Overview

Once in a while a book comes along that can actually change our lives. In A Family Place, Charles Gaines has given us such a book, a beautifully written, moving chronicle about fatherhood and family, marriage and love, and what it means to create a "family place" - a home. In the summer of 1990, writer Charles Gaines and his artist wife, Patricia, bought 160 acres of wild land on the northeast coast of Nova Scotia. They believed they were simply buying a remote getaway spot; but within a few months a more complex dream for the property developed. By mid-winter, they had begun to see the land as a place where family intimacy might be reclaimed; as a home that might heal their recently battered thirty-year marriage; and as an opportunity to take on a big, risky, long-term project instead of settling into the caution and gradual losses of middle-class middle age. Enlisting their children and their daughter's carpenter boyfriend, they decided to build a cabin on the land the following summer, to build it with their own hands, as a family venture. A Family Place gracefully mixes a narrative of that summer's sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking events with passages of the family's history that show its members as real people and dramatize what is at stake for each of them in Nova Scotia. Gaines describes the process of building a cabin while living in tents without electricity or running water, and the pleasures and limitations of a life so simplified that a week's biggest social event is a bonfire. He draws a deft portrait of the small, generous, hearth-centered Acadian community of farmers and lobster fishermen surrounding their land, and traces the history of that land to its original French-Acadian owner. And he tracks the mood of his family through the long, difficult summer, from initial enthusiasm to near mutiny and finally to the exhilaration and deep satisfaction of having built something that will last, and having rebuilt the fa

With their family life in ruins, bestselling author Charles Gaines and his wife, Patricia, decided to build a house themselves on the coast of Nova Scotia, hoping that simplicity and isolation would mend their marriage and bring their children closer. This is his moving chronicle of his family's search for what is important in life, and the joy and heartbreak they found along the way.

About the Author, Charles Gaines

Charles Gaines is the author of Stay Hungry and the international bestseller Pumping Iron. He and his wife Patricia divide their time among New Hampshire, Alabama and Nova Scotia.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Tired of the frenetic pace of his life, worried that his 30-year marriage was in trouble, novelist Gaines ( Stay Hungry ) convinced his wife Patricia that they needed a change of scene. In 1990 they bought 160 acres on the northeast coast of Nova Scotia where they would construct a cabin and rebuild their lives together. The following summer the author, his wife, their three adult children, some friends and a local carpenter began work on the cabin. They lived in tents, without electricity or running water. In this charming account of that summer, Gaines combines the story of building the cabin with glimpses into his family history and a portrait of the Acadian community that surrounds his property. This is a heartwarming memoir of shared experiences and rediscovery. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Gaines, who gave us Pumping Iron and joined Arnold Schwarzenegger to write Arnold's Fitness for Kids (Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92), here takes a different tack. In what the publicist describes as a literary book, he recounts his family's experiences building a house in Nova Scotia.