"The Guest Book" by Sarah Blake

On Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting in the living room of a hotel suite in Los Angeles with my mother, my sister and my brother. We were getting our makeup done, while my brother was pitching jokes for his speech later that evening at the event honoring my dad. The tension level was high, and dramatic, and crazy things were happening about every other minute, yet I could not have been happier. Maybe it is because I live in San Francisco and they are all in Los Angeles, but I find my family fascinating, like sitting down to read an epic historical family saga. “The Guest Book” is, in fact, that kind of novel. Part love story, part mystery, Sarah Blake’s book is an inter-generational tale about an America family with close bonds and deep secrets. In the mid-1930s, when Kitty and Ogden Milton start their family, their lives seem perfect until the accidental death of a son shatters their world. Ogden, trying to move beyond the grief, purchases an island in Maine to try and forge a new future for his family. The island and the house, where they will visit during the summers and raise their children and grandchildren, will prove to be far from an idealic for the family. When the Ogden and Kitty’s grandchildren are forced to explore selling the Maine house because of money concerns, tightly kept secrets from their past push their way into the future, threatening the fragile state of the Milton family. The family’s history is interwoven with themes of war, class and racism in America that sadly permeate the historical landscape of our country. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.