Clare, Loving: A Novel in Three Novellas

Traveling from present-day Chicago to the Bicentennial summer of 1976 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and New Orleans, and then to Minnesota in the late 1950s, Clare, Loving: A Novel in Three Novellas is the story of Clare McHenry, whose mirroring estrangements from her mother and daughter are shaped by the puzzles of religion, men, silence, and the spiraling of time. Given the book’s reverse narration, there is a normal accretion of detail and an added unfolding of layers that carry the reader “forward” to the seminal action. As “Sylvie” opens, Clare has just learned that her daughter, faraway in Texas, has given birth to a son. By the close of “The Nuns on the Roof of St. Peter’s,” ten-year-old Clare has been distanced from her own mother and introduced to the guilt that roils her later life. In the intervening section, “The Beautiful Ships,” Clare pursues a passionate, secret, and disastrous affair with the unexpected man who becomes Sylvie’s father.