This is a novel about a family and what a family it was. Sam was the father. He was a scientist and had a government job. Henny was his second wife having married her after the death of his first wife. The couple had seven children and no way to provide for them. Henny had come from money and Sam just assumed that her father would give her money whenever she needed it and gave her very little to run the household on. She had bills everywhere with grocers and clothing stores as she attempted to provide for the children.

Sam would do things like take off for almost a year on a trip for his work, leaving Henny behind to handle everything. He was sure he was the best of fathers and constantly told the children how wonderful he was. Both he and Henny constantly belittled the children, especially the older, Louise, who was Henny's stepdaughter. They would tease and insult the targeted child until he or she cried, then made fun of them for crying.

Sam lost his job and moved the family to a ramshackle house near the Chesapeake Bay. When Henny's rich father died, it turned out that he wasn't really rich and the money Sam had always assumed Henny would get didn't materialize. Yet Sam had no interest in getting a job. The children were dirty, wearing ragged clothes to school. There was nothing in the house of value yet Sam insisted on telling them everyday how wonderfully he was raising them. He and Henny opened hated each other, having raging fights in front of the children. A horrible family indeed.

Christina Stead is an Australian author. She lived from 1902 to 1983, living in Australia and London. The novel was set at the end of the Great Depression. One of the issues I had with the novel was why the author set it in the United States, since she had no experience living there. Overall, she did an adequate job with the locale but there were little things that constantly cropped up that gave away that the author wasn't native. The main issue I had with this novel was its length. It was almost six hundred pages and I felt that it could have easily been edited to a shorter novel without losing any of the descriptions and events detailed. Many of the fights and the horrible treatment of the children were repetitive and could have been deleted. This book is considered a classic and is recommended for readers of literary fiction.