title: House Hold: A Memoir of Place
author:  Ann Peters 
description: A literature teacher and the daughter of an architect, Peters has a strong and compelling perspective on the sense of place in life and literature. She grew up in a modern house perched on a ledge in the woods of eastern Wisconsin. Designed by her father, it represented social striving and was meant to be a map of an inventive mind but remained at the nexus of family strife after her parents divorce. It set them apart from others and sparked a lifelong search for belonging. Peters ties her memories to great stories of small-town life by Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and others. Twenty years of living in New York evokes romantic notions about the city drawn from the writings of Willa Cather and Paule Marshall. Eventually, Peters buys a small house in upstate New York. All along, she ponders her constantly changing landscape, resenting changing and reluctantly conceding her participation in that change, resigning herself to living inside others history. Peters writes beautifully of the meaning of authenticity and the need to belong. --Vanessa Bush
zlib_text: PUBLISHED	BY	DOUBLEDAY
  a	division	of	Random	House,	Inc.,
  DOUBLEDAY	and	the	portrayal	of	an	anchor	with	a	dolphin	are	registered
  trademarks	of	Random	House,	Inc.
  This	book	is	a	work	of	fiction.	Names,	characters,	businesses,	organizations,
  places,	events,	and	incidents	either	are	the	product	of	the	author’s	imagination
  or	are	used	fictitiously.	Any	resemblance	to	actual	persons,	living	or	dead,
  events,	or	locales	is	entirely	coincidental.
  Excerpts	from	this	work	first	appeared	in	the	Boston	Globe	Magazine,
  Boulevard,	Five	Points,	Harvard	Review,	Hunger	Mountain,	The	Kenyon
  Review,	The	Missouri	Review,	Prairie	Schooner,	and	Southwest	Review.
  Library	of	Congress	Cataloging-in-Publication	Data
  Hoffman,	Alice.
  Blackbird	House	/	Alice	Hoffman
  p.		cm.
  1.	Women—Massachusetts—Fiction.	2.	Home	ownership—Fiction.	3.
  Massachusetts—Fiction.	4.	Dwellings—Fiction.	I.	Title.
  PS3558.O3447B55		2004
  813'.54—dc22
  Copyright	©	2004	by	Alice	Hoffman
  All	Rights	Reserved
  eISBN:	978-0-385-51401-9
  v3.0_r1
  
  CONTE