Even as middle-aged lawyers who long ago escaped their hometown for New
York City, Bob and Jim Burgess still stagger under the guilt of
a freak
accident that killed their father when they were
children. In Elizabeth
Strout's
The Burgess Boys, a crisis
with their nephew compels them to return to Shirley
Falls,
Maine, and revisit the fatal tragedy. As in her Pulitzer
Price-winning
Olive
Kitteridge,
Strout deftly exposes the
tensions that fester among families. But she
also takes a
broader view, probing cultural divides
—from the mutual
distrust
of locals and Somali refugees who've settled in Shirley Falls
to the resentment and disdain underlying relationships between
those who
grew up poor and privileged Americans, such as Jim's
heiress wife,
Helen, who has observed that the Burgess family
is "hillbilly, rube
trash." Illustrating the power of roots,
Strout assures us we can go
home again
—tough we may not want to.
