Each and All

Set in 1999 before their children took modern culture from them the way they took it from their parents, Each and All is a novel that shows the best and worst of what the baby boom generation has done to modern life. How they have changed the meaning of love, marriage, parenting, sexuality, material desire and ambition, art, culture and the meaning of work, and social responsibility, it is all here in intertwined love stories that cross generations and class. The generation that set communication and self-realization as the foundation of personal fulfillment, came to face the ultimate irony that they had created lives where every heart is an island facing loneliness, loss and a bitter isolation that comes with uncompromising demands for autonomy. One such little family on the brink of collapse is taken in by a rural family of 14 adopted children that has defied the momentum of pure individualism and created a way to live that binds those it touches in ways that affirm the deepest satisfactions of human purpose and shared commitment. In love and loss, strength and weakness, ambition and disappointment, one powerful family expressing an irrepressible enthusiasm for life has created a secular Shaker model of life where every individual can find meaning in the context of something greater than the self. Bring a big supply of tissues if you are at all vulnerable to tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of pity and tears of loss. This is a book that can change a reader’s heart the way so many are changed in its beautiful pages.