One Hundred Years of Marriage: A Novel in Stories

Note to the reader: What was your father thinking the night he proposed to your mother? Why did she say yes? By the time we ask, all the compelling details have cooled into whatever myths they’ve chosen to tell us. Our grandparents’ stories are even more frozen, and the truths of our great-grandparents’ unions have perished in the airless memories of the dead. In ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE Louise Farmer Smith pierces the myths through four generations of one American family’s mismatched marriages—the teenage girl lifted out of the hunger and chaos that followed the Civil War; the suicidal wife isolated on the Oklahoma prairie; the china painter whose husband cannot make a living; and her daughter who dreams of luxury. Dark? Yes, but funny too. These six stories move backward in time to search out the influences on the children--the standards, prejudices, and overheard conversations--they forget but carry with them when they choose a spouse.