The Home-maker

This radical 1924 novel describes Evangeline, an obsessively house-proud mother and home-maker who renders each of her children miserable in different ways, through her perfectionism and her need to control; without realizing it, she is frustrated and bored - yet she thinks she is a good and devoted mother. Lester, her husband, is also unhappy, at home and at work. It is only when he falls off a roof that his family's life changes; he is wheelchair-bound at home and his wife goes to work in a department store (the setting is smalltown New England). The children gradually blossom.