The Hole We're In

Book excerpt: A “sharply funny and sobering . . . portrait of a family in financial free fall” from the New York Times–bestselling author of Young Jane Young (People). With The Hole We’re In—a bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even more troubled America—award-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents. Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she’s been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they’ve dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children—especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We’re In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin’s deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages. “Blazing . . . Sharp . . . a Corrections for our recessionary times . . . [Zevin] establishes herself as an astute chronicler of the way we spend now.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review