The Venables

A long, full novel of a San Francisco middle-class family around 1900, a novel more solidly built than anything she has done recently. The mother of six, Willie Venable, is large-hearted, shiftless, easy-going, and when the father dies, the responsibility falls on the capable shoulders of second daughter, Flo. The elder sister marries a stiff, stern man of forty, who does them out of an inheritance and gives them a coal flat to live in. But eventually Flo saves the family bacon, shows up her brother-in-law, and goes off to Europe where she finds her own future solved. Fully documented with domestic detail, a good homespun story, chiefly designed for libraries and rentals. (Kirkus Reviews)