“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.


艾比∙維茲涵可只要一說到 1959 年 7 月自己是如何愛上瑞德，故事開頭總是千遍一律：「那天的午後是那麼美，微風拂來，一片片綠和黃……」。維茲涵可一家的敦睦團結，是那麼特別，難以言傳，又讓人羨慕。但他們也像其他家庭一樣，記得的總是只有片面的美好故事。艾比和瑞德的四個子女早已長大成人；過去一家人的確創造了許多溫暖的時刻，有笑容，有歡愉，但同時也有嫉妒，有失望，更有藏在內心深處的秘密。1920 年代初，瑞德的父母在巴爾的摩落地生根，到了 21 世紀，瑞德和艾比的孫子繼續將家族傳統傳承下去。這個家充滿了維茲涵可四代人的生活記憶；雖然亂，雖然舊，卻充滿愛，這個家是他們永遠的支柱。