The Keepers of the House

by Shirley Ann Grau

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, The Keepers of the House is Shirley Ann Grau’s masterwork, a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.

Entrenched on the same land since the early 1800s, the Howlands have, for seven generations, been pillars of their Southern community. Extraordinary family lore has been passed down to Abigail Howland, but not all of it. When shocking facts come to light about her late grandfather William’s relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, the community is outraged, and quickly gathers to vent its fury on Abigail. Alone in the house the Howlands built, she is at once shaken by those who have betrayed her, and determined to punish the town that has persecuted her and her kin.

Morally intricate, graceful and suspenseful, The Keepers of the House has become a modern classic.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics, Southern, Race, Historical, Book Club

320 pages, ebook

First published February 12, 1964

About the author

Shirley Ann Grau (b. 1929) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist of nine novels and short story collections, whose work is set primarily in her native South. Grau was raised in Alabama and Louisiana, and many of her novels document the broad social changes of the Deep South during the twentieth century, particularly as they affected African Americans. Grau’s first novel, The Hard Blue Sky (1958), about the descendants of European pioneers living on an island off the coast of Louisiana, established her as a master of vivid description, both for characters and locale, a style she maintained throughout her career. Her public profile rose during the civil rights movement, when her dynastic novel Keepers of the House (1964), which dealt with race relations in Alabama, earned her a Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau is the October 2016 pre 1980 read for the Southern Literary Trail group on Goodreads. The 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner for literature, Grau's third novel brings the multiple sides of race relations in the south bubbling to the surface. A novel featuring exquisite prose and a captivating story, Keepers of the House weaves a tale of many generations of one interlocking family in a rural southern community.

The Howland family had first come to Madison City in the days of Andrew Jackson. In the 1960s the family still occupies an estate on the outskirts of town yet has grown to own most of the town and the land surrounding it. Despite being stubborn and wild, the Howlands represent an archetype for a southern family that rebuilds time and again and adapts to the changes around them. At the time of this novel, we meet Abigail Howland Mason, a strong southern woman and the granddaughter of the last William Howland. Keepers of the House is her story as much as her family's, and she narrates her backstory from the porch of her home.

William Howland fell in love with a Negro named Margaret Carmichael later in life at a time when having one drop of black blood was a crime in the south. Intermarriage was unheard of and punishable. Yet, William Howland did the unthinkable- he went north to marry Margaret and made sure that she and their children were taken care of for the rest of their lives. Even though he largely raised his granddaughter Abigail, he keeps this secret from her for the rest of his life.

Shirley Grau weaves a tale of politics, race relations, and magical realism that often comes to the surface in southern tales. In this gem of a book, she creates memorable characters from William Howland's sister Annie to Margaret's family to Oliver the housekeeper. She takes us back to a time where much of a county is related to one another and weddings and funerals last for weeks. Even as late as the 1940s and '50s, she creates a modern rural persona in Abigail who is naive to the ways of the world yet strong as a keeper of her family's land. Her charming narration of much of this book held my attention, especially in parts that were painful to read.

Keepers of the House is much deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. Shirley Ann Grau brings race and political relations to a head at a time when respected white southern men joined the Klan. Writing this novel when the south was divided over the passage of the Civil Rights Act must have taken much courage on her part. I am grateful for the Southern Literary Trail for selecting this gem of a book, or I most likely would not have chosen it on my own. A hidden diamond of a book and a writer, I rate Keepers of the House five bright stars.

[Kevin Ansbro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sweeping saga won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for its depiction of a dynastic white family in rural Alabama at a time when prejudice and racism lived cheek-by-jowl with oppression and hypocrisy.

No sooner had the curtain lifted on the cryptic opening chapter than I was purring at the innovative descriptiveness of Grau's prose. The tale unfolds slowly, like a lazy summer afternoon, the author using alliteration to great effect:
Wobbling waddle; blotched brambles; beetles bumbling; wings whizzing; silvery and shining; leaf-littered; the wind whimpers; the sluggish spring; the gentle grey-eyed girl…

The story itself serves as a social commentary hidden within a fascinating family drama that focuses on the frowned-upon relationship between William Howland and his black housekeeper, Margaret Carmichael.

Though impactful and full of purpose, the story does drag at times (it would be too boring for many) and is only saved by the author's evocative writing and the couple's uplifting love for each other. I also winced at Grau's ill-judged habit of apostrophising era denominations (1800’s, 1900’s, 60’s, etc.). Yes, I know that a lot of people do this, but I'm crankily pedantic to the point that I'm even annoyed with myself for being so pedantic.
Shut up, Kevin. You're an idiot!
I know I am.
So shut up then!
Okay, okay. I will.
: )

Nit-picking aside, I'm a sucker for great love affairs and brave storytelling, and I also loved William and Margaret, so I gave this lyrical masterpiece all of the stars!

[Dave Marsland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a funny thing. I'd been looking at this book for a couple of years harbouring the fear that I may find it boring. More fool me.
The theme of racial disharmony in the South is a well trodden path, but what Shirley Ann Grau delivers is fundamentally a love story. The writing is beautiful.
Set in Alabama, William Howland, a Southern gentleman of substance, does the unthinkable. He falls in love with a black woman (Margaret), has children with her and then marries her (in secret). Margaret is a fantastic character, dignified and intelligent. The sacrifice she makes for her children cannot be understated .
The majority of the book is seen through the eyes of Abigail, William's granddaughter. She's wonderfully phlegmatic and when word gets out about William and Margret's marriage things become quite hairy, but she deals with it magnificently.
It's a real shame that The Keepers of the House, it won the Pulitzer prize in 1965, has been somewhat forgotten. This should be taught on the school curriculum for the simple reason that the writing is clever and wise.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sweeping tale of a Southern family, racial prejudice, and human integrity. The Howlands are those Southerners--the ones with lots of money, power and name. After the death of his first wife, Will Howland fathers three children with his black housekeeper, Margaret, a woman he loves. Everyone knows this, but no one acknowledges it. Even inside the Howland home, this is a visible secret.


We meet both Will and Margaret before they meet one another. Margaret is one of the most unique, believable and interesting characters that I have ever encountered. Will, a strong man, handles his situation in the most upstanding manner that he believes a man in that day and age can do. This is a tale of family; a tale of blood, and sometimes a tale of how little we know about the people that we know the best. Will’s granddaughter, Abigail, is left to handle the consequences of this legacy, and she draws on the strength of her grandfather’s blood in a way that leaves you cheering for her aloud.


The most shocking thing about this book is that it is not more widely known and appreciated. It received the Pulitzer prize in 1965, and I can imagine that it caused a bit of a stir in the South, a region in the throes of desegregation. Like Lamb in His Bosom, another Pulitzer that I only discovered this year, this book has just faded into obscurity, and that is hard to understand. Perhaps people feel it does not have any true relevance anymore, but I think it speaks to the humanity of every character in the most relevant of ways. Are we not still, and always, being encouraged to view our world through the most politically expedient optics? How many of us decide what we think and feel based on what we are told we ought to think and feel? How many of us have the courage to lead a life that is opposed to that norm?


Along the way, Grau scatters little bits of wisdom that are completely true, completely universal, and yet so seldom voiced:


We’ll remember him, she thought. For a time, a little time, before it starts slipping away from us, and we won’t remember hardly at all. Then we’ll be dead too, and that’ll be the end of him, for good. And isn’t it funny, she thought, that it takes two generations to kill off a man? ...First him, and then his memory…


I have often thought exactly this. Everyone who personally knew my grandparents is dead, excepting my generation of siblings and cousins. When we are gone, no one on earth will remember them and many of our children will probably not even be able to identify them in photographs. But we are made up of these people. Many of the things I have passed to the next generation have come directly from them, many of the most precious stories I know are their stories. In so many ways, that is what this book is really about, the passage of time and the passage of something unidentifiable, in the blood, that is about who we are and where we come from.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book about 15 years ago when I assigned it for my bookclub. It was one of the best discussions we ever had about racism, hatred and Southerness. I decided to re-read this when it was a choice for On the Southern Literary Trail group here on GR.

It was every bit as good this time around, maybe even better. A family saga of the Howlands, a family who settled in what sounds like northern Alabama, although the locale is never named. With 200 years of living on the same land, in the same house, we get the stories of the predecessors of Will Howland and his grand-daughter Abigail. Will spent his last 30 years living with his black "housekeeper", and had 3 children with her. Abigail is the one who has to deal with that legacy. The way she dealt with the prejudice and anger of the townspeople when they learn the truth will have you cheering. Revenge can be a wonderful thing when you have the money to do it right.

This book won the Pulitzer in 1965, and, in my opinion, deservedly so. Beautiful, poetic prose, wonderful nature writing, an understanding of how to build a story, and some powerful characters determined to protect their own make this a great book. Highly recommended to anyone needing a really good book to get involved in.

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonders will never cease. This Is not the first time I was reading a novel and 1) wondering why on earth I was reading such a boring novel and 2) swearing at myself for continuing to read it when it clearly was a DNF book, and when was I ever going to learn, because if not now, when? And in this case why on earth did it win a Pulitzer Prize in 1965? This is what I asked myself after I had been through 136 pages of this edition of the book (LSU Press, Voices of the South, 1995). Those pages contained a brief section by Abigail “Junior” (daughter of the original Abigail ) who was White, then a section by her grandfather William Howland who was White, then a section by William’s what I thought was common-law wife, Margaret, who was African American, by which he sired 3 children.

Then I turned to the second-to-last section of the book and the longest section, when Abigail picked up her rendering of events, and then it just seemed to me like there was somebody else writing the book. It became a whole lot more interesting. And let’s say that I understood why it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1965. I was once again captive to what I was reading…I couldn’t put it down.

The synopsis of the book is as follows and its beginning does make mention of slowness, which I think reflects why I was frustrated for 136 pages. I’m including it because it gives a good summary of the book without revealing spoilers:
• “…The Keepers of the House is a novel of immense power that builds slowly, in layers, to an overarching realization both terrible and satisfying. It is the story of William Howland and Margaret Carmichael and their love for each other, told by William’s granddaughter, Abigail. Seven generations of Howland family lore are handed down by Abigail by her grandfather, whose own story, however, he does not fully reveal to her. When searing information about William comes to light after his death, Abigail must face the fury and judgment of the entire country. Abandoned, isolated, and yet exhilarated, she heeds the gaze of her ancestors and with incisiveness bordering on madness acts to keep the Howland legacy intact.”

When Abigail takes over the telling of events she is 8 years old and the time is around 1939 and at the end of the book at its climax she is in her 30s and I’d estimate the year at around 1965 (I’m not sure a year was given…). What I am grappling with, and I am anxious to get to the reviews, is how much I should dislike Abigail (because I do) and how much I should dislike two of Margaret’s children (her half-brother Robert who is a bit older than her and sister Nina who is the same age as her). I get the sense I am to dislike Robert for what he did to Abigail that exposed something her father had done which resulted in the climactic ending…and that I am also to dislike Nina…but I don’t.

After reading this book, I was comparing it to “To Kill a Mockingbird” because they both were about the rampant racism that exists in our country. And I was thinking that everybody has heard of, and probably read, To Kill a Mockingbird —but unless I have been living under a rock it seems to me that this book is less well-known.

Notes:
• Damn, I did not know this! August 5, 2020 from USA Today. NEW ORLEANS — Shirley Ann Grau, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer whose stories and novels told of both the dark secrets and the beauty of the Deep South, has died. She was 91.
• This is the first book in my life that I have come across make mention of the flowering plant called ‘four-o-clocks’. When I was growing up, my mother had them growing in a small garden off to the side of our house. They were so cool — every afternoon the flowers (trumpet shaped) would open up and then in the morning they would be closed again. And they were perennials so every year they would come up. The flowers were mostly purples as I recall but one plant was yellow. Supposedly Grau is known for meticulously describing flora….she certainly did in this book (to excess I thought which accounted in part for my boredom in the beginning).
• This novel came out in a condensed form in a magazine called Ladies Home Journal. It is now defunct (per 2016). (I googled it and I can’t find any mention of the book being in that magazine…I would have to think a snippet was taken from the book and published in the magazine.)
• One final comment and I say this over and over in my reviews…that had it not been for Goodreads, I would never have read this book. A GR friend gave it high marks and I was impressed enough to put it on my TBR list. My TBR list is now over 170 books long. What to do? 🙃

Reviews
• https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964... (by Eve Auchincloss from the June 25, 1964 edition of the New York Review of Books)
• https://www.apr.org/post/keepers-hous...
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...

[Margitte · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Money and Power hurts really badly, it lashes out and destroys as much as it has lost. When Money and Power looks back on the cadavers left behind after the battle was concluded, it sees a drought-shrunken river which turns back the sky, dully, like an old mirror.

Over the vast expanse of the Alabama heartland, belonging to seven generations of William Howlands, destiny spanned invisible woven threads over Howland Place, Madison City and the county. Abigail Howland Mason Tolliver, a Howland descendant, stumbled and fell into it. The sins of the fathers revisited the children. It was a God-awful reality.

There was a time when Money-power had a human name. It all started out in the spring of 1815 when William Marshall Howland from Tennessee, settled down in the county and named the river Providence, after his mother. Through seven generations, the Howlands worked hard. They farmed and hunted; they made whiskey and rum and took it to the market down the Providence River to Mobile.

However, it was Mrs. Aimeé Legendre Howland, wife of William Carter Howland's brother, who changed the shape and size of the Howland fortunes during the Reconstruction. She had a craving for land, and as other farms were sold (in the poverty-stricken '70's and '80's) she began buying. All sorts of land. Bottoms, for cotton. Sandy pine ridges that weren't used for anything in those days except woodlots.

It was Methodist and Baptist country, where Coonshine was popular; Catholics and Freejack Negroes were unpopular; Ridge runners brewed likker in the middle of the Honey Island Swamps; the New Church community of proud Freejacks settled the pine uplands and the swampy bottomlands between the east and west branches of the Providence River, had Indian Coctaw ancestry, with their customs and traditions intact, keeping them even more away from the other Negros and spawned a half-breed called Margaret Carmichael. She borned three red-headed, blue-eyed children to William Howland and sent them away forever to the North, to save them from a life as quadroons, or Negroes in the South, grubbing in the mud. After all, Margaret traveled by train to Cleveland to give birth to all three her white children. That way the word 'Negro' was not on their birth certificates. In the South they were still regarded as William Howland's wood colts.

One of them was Robert Howland Carmichael, William Howland's half-breed and only son, who could never claim his rightful name, which should have been William Howland the Eighth, or better yet, William Carmichael Howland. Neither could he claim his heritage. He became Abigail's biggest threat. In the South, most people could tell that Robert was a Negro. In the North, he would have been white. Abigail wished him dead. But their common atavistic destiny dictated a different path ...

With a ruthless vengeance the wrongs of the past came tumbling down and shattered the illusion of heaven on earth when Ms. Abigail Howland Mason married the ambitious lawyer John Tolliver, a gubernatorial candidate. Sleeping dogs would have blissfully slumbered forever, was it not for John's indefatigable political hunger and Robert Carmichael's visit to his legally white family of Howland Place.

William Howland once told his granddaughter, Abigail, that she was a child and like her mother Abigail, his daughter, had very little sense. He also said: "Our children grow old and elbow us into the grave." And that is why Money and Power would finally get a human face: Abigail Howland Mason Tolliver. It was all she had left to fight back.

And that's when history burst out in tears.

My comments
A tragic, beautiful tale, told in picturesque, cinematic, lyrical prose. The misleading serenity of the woodlands and the swamps; the volatility of the times; the hatred and hypocrisy of the inhabitants; the cruelness of history - it all burst open like an overripe boil that has been foisted for too long on a toxic body.

What if William Howland did not venture into the swamps to find the hidden stills of the Robertson brothers and met Margaret Carmichael washing her clothes in a remote spot of the river?
What if Abigail, his daughter, did not marry Gregory Edward Mason?
What if Abigail, his granddaughter, did not marry John Tolliver?
What if William Howland made his only son, Robert, his rightful heir?
What if Abigail did not inherited his power and wealth from her grandfather?
What if Abigail blamed her own choices for the tragedy that ensued, and not other people? For instance, who forced her to marry her husband?
What if Abigail has done right to Margaret Carmichael's children? She could have changed their lives, but decided not to?

Would it have changed the racial conflict or the white perceptions in any way?
Was Abigail's revenge the only option to resolve the bitter conflict?

My guess is that this book did not receive the accolades it deserved due to the 'unrealistic' ending. Added to that was the almost never-ending painting of the canvas as the background to the final events. Although beautifully described in almost microscopic detail, the too elongated, tedious descriptions of the wilderness and the swamps, and the history of violence and vengeance of the people surviving in it, discouraged more readers than it should have.

The book also confronted an America during a volatile period in the Sixties, when people died in an effort to bring justice to all citizens of the country.

The book could have made a difference if it was edited into a streamlined, focused story of a woman who had to face the consequences of her heritage alone, against an angry mob of cruel bigots who all leeched off her grandfather's wealth and his sense of humanitarian compassion. There were too many word dumping taking place, lessening the drama considerably.

The book was also a story told a million times before. It added nothing new to the debate that was raging through the country.

What it did do, though, was bring a deeply heartfelt tale to the table where anger and resentment ruled at the time, and presented a story in a musical rhythm of words. It was a saga which needed to be told. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1965 for exactly this reason.

"Do what you have to do, " William Howland told his granddaughter from his grave, when she lay emotionally wounded, bleeding, hurting, alone.

And so she did, with the blood of seven generations of Howlands raging through her body, and the well of anger drenching an ancestral thirst for revenge. She did it the best way she knew how.

A gripping tale. A touching story. A thought-provoking experience.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner. Years ago, I had this novel and planned to read it, but I did not. I am so glad that I finally picked it up again. The setting is rural Alabama and covers mostly three generations of the Howland family, pillars of their community. The beginning unspools slowly as the author sets the mood and local environment with lengthy descriptions of the swamps and brooding atmosphere of the deep south. I almost decided to set the novel aside, but I’m glad that I persevered. It is a gorgeously written formal accusation of racism with an astonishingly rewarding (and karmic) conclusion for the reader!

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.3] I'm sure this was a groundbreaking novel in 1964. It depicts the Howland family and their home and long history in their southern community with excruciating detail. Grau writes well, especially about the intersection of white and Black lives. The racism is portrayed bluntly, as an accepted part of the Howland family's world. I didn't have much patience for any of them, or Abigail the 2nd, the narrator of much of the book, who sleepwalks through her life until the ending. I did love the ending.

[Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

1965 Pulitzer winner, I Found akin to Being Made to Eat a Heaping Helping of Turnip Greens [yuck!] Because I was a "Growing Boy"

The Unfair Bait-and-Switch

I read this novel for two reasons: it won the Pulitzer the year I was born, and it's set in a fictional county in the deep American South during a time of racial hatred and violence. I'm sure The Keepers of the House had quite an impact back then; and, the nation's posture at the time screamed for Pulitzer to give its prize to Ms. Grau for this book.

I was quite disappointed nonetheless. The novel is righteous in achieving its ultimate just revenge. Yet vengeance is not the protagonist's until the last 5% on kindle, after taking several hours to get there, which wouldn't have been a problem had it not been a long and quite boring 95% in which I had a hard time going back to it. The characters are rather shallow, and it seems to me that Ms. Grau could have cut the book in half and still achieved her goal.

Like my grandmother putting a large helping of unpleasant looking/smelling turnip greens in front of 7-year-old me at Sunday dinner, I had to force myself to keep reading, telling myself 'it's good for a growing mind.' Yet, I cringed getting it down, in an overall reading experience that was much more chore than pleasure.


[At 7: Beyonce would have made little difference. Now: 'have you also any spinach?']

[CoachJim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of an old, wealthy family living in the deep south. The patriarch of the family settled there after serving with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Over the many generations that follow the family accumulates land and is said to own most of the county. In the present time the story follows three characters: William, the last male descendant of the family, Abigail, the Granddaughter of William, and Margaret, the housekeeper. When the husband of Abigail becomes a candidate for Governor of Alabama the racial prejudice and hatred becomes a part of the story. An old family secret is also then revealed which destroys the family. It also serves as a metaphor for the racial troubles destroying our country.

Early in the book there is a long description of a journey through a swamp by William. The danger from reptiles and animals are a foreshadowing of the trouble ahead for the family after William meets Margaret upon exiting the swamp.

This book was published in 1964, the same year a major Civil Rights Bill was moving through Congress. The timing, the quality of the story and the great writing explain its selection for a Pulitzer Prize that year. This ranks along with To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as one of the great novels about race relations in out country.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 It was hard to get into at first bc I had so many "life" things going on around me but I knew it was a good book right away. This is a historical fiction book spanning 7 generations of the Howland family told in the narrative of Abigail Howland. It starts with her grandfather, William's, perspective then goes on to Margaret Carmichael's story and how they happened to meet. Margaret is the black "housekeeper" William has "hired." She also births him 5 children but only 3 survive. No one bats an eye to this indiscretion until a secret is revealed after their deaths.

The story build up was a slow one but much needed to tell the story. I liked Abigail at first, when she told of being a young child but as she grew and married I wanted to punch her snobby ass in the face. She redeems herself in the end by being a strong woman (with lots of money to help do the talking) when all the men in her life have left her but she turned out to be a spoiled white typical Southern woman, stereotype for that time. If she would have learned anything from her grandpa, who raised her, she would have turned out to be a decent human being. But I guess we don't listen until life punches us in the face and we are left with quotes to remember.

"My grandfather said: 'He'll do all right.. There's some of his family that's bums, but there's some of ours we can't look too hard at. We could start listing with your father." (PAGE 198)

"You don't seem happy about it."
"He had begun to fill his pipe. 'Honey, I'm just too old to get excited. Seems like all I can remember is how many time the same thing has happened to me, Right now you're telling me this. And seems all I can remember is your mother and me, just the two of us driving back from the station in a buggy and coming up that front drive there, same drive, same plants, same everything, and her telling me she was in love and getting married.'
"John's not like my father."
"And seems I can remember me coming home to tell my parents I was in love and getting married. And they didn't look surprised either, nor very happy."
"It's not the same with me," I said, "it's different."
"When you're old as me," he said, "you'll see that there ain't much that's different or separate or unusual." (PAGE 199)

Loved these quotes... every generation thinks they are better and smarter than the last but it all goes through cycles and we are saying the same things to our children.
This was a great historical fiction novel for fans of this genre.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm the foolish one who let this set on their shelf unread for 10 years! What an incredible book that I never hear of (OK well one friend mentioned it)that needs more attention.-- I am going to say that after To Kill A Mockingbird as number one, this book should be number two on a list of books about the South. If I had to nominate any single book to represent and capture the American South, this would be it.--There are eccentric family secrets and they are indelicate, but the delicacy of the voice that delivers the words soothes with gentleness. The contrast from delicacy to violent forces of nature and mankind enrich every page.--So much history, so many nuances of the culture, there are so many things that you will file away in your soul to return to later.-- I heart strong(Southern)women, and the younger Abigail shows her mettle before the perfectly suited ending. This book will move you, lead you to places complex and beautiful.-- It could make grown men shed a tear more than once and not at obvious places, sometimes just in anticipation of what you expect to happen. This is not melodramatic, this is art. --These are also some of the best descriptions of our Natural world, this amazingly skilled author delivers beautiful vignettes while keeping a kinetic thread of activity. Action passes through nature and leaves a poets keen observances of the beautiful and the violent.--I recommend this to everyone. If this is not the South, this is the way I wish to imagine it! My Opinion,OR NOT

[Doug H · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Harper Lee, Henry David Thoreau and Wallace Stegner had a triracial love child it might read something like this 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Wait a second... Triracialism... I think I need to go back and reread some things in Margaret's section before I continue trying to write this. In the meantime (and I case I don't), let me just say that it's a crime that this isn't as widely read as To Kill a Mockingbird. I learned so much more from it.

5 stars.

[Cheryl James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was on a quest to read a book whom the author was a Pulitzer-Prize Winner and I came across the Keepers of the House. This book was amazing. I understand now why this book received the Pulitzer award. The author did not just write a story, she told the story from her heart and soul. The book is impeccable from the beginning to the end. The characters come to life one by one. As I listened to this book on audio it was like listening to my great grandmother tell me about my family history. The story felt so personal.

It is really sad that hatred and racism was rooted so deep back then and is still rooted just as deep today.

I was not that crazy about the ending (the last 1minute) of the book. It fell short and out of line with the story, however that is a small issue considering the rest of the story.

Empowering Read!!

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written book which tells the story of a house, the land it sits on and the Howland family who lived in it for well over a century. Grau has created her own corner of the South here, presenting men and women of varying strengths and weaknesses, all caught up in the ongoing history of that area including the complications, terrors and pain of race relations.

Multiple generations have lived and died on this land and the white family has always had black hands working the land with them. That's just the course of their existence. But their lives are separate even if they are close. This is a spot far from the city and deeply Southern in its attitude toward blacks.


Everyone tells stories around here. Every place, every
person has a ring of stories around them, a halo almost.
People have told me tales ever since I was a tiny girl
squatting in the front dooryard, in mud-caked overalls,
digging for doodlebugs. They have talked to me, and
talked to me. some I've forgotten, but most I remember.
And so my memory goes back before my birth. (loc 128)


And stories are what the reader will hear in multiple voices. Stories of births and deaths; of love, hate, revenge and occasional understanding, bringing the Howland house and it's "keepers" up to the middle of the 20th century.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of American Southern fiction and readers of good fiction in general. The pace can vary as there are slow episodes, descriptive passages, treks in the wild. but it is well worth it to get a feeling for another time and place and people.

[Connie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

The Howlands settled in rural Alabama in the beginning of the 19th Century, and became one of the most affluent and respected families in Wade County. Abigail, the granddaughter of William Howland, reflects back on the family's history in the Howland's large home. After Abigail's grandmother died, William began a relationship with Margaret, a black housekeeper. Years later, Abigail's husband is spouting racist statements in order to get elected around the early 1960s. In the last days of his political campaign, new information comes to light about William and Margaret's relationship. The white community turns its rage upon Abigail since she is the granddaughter of the deceased Howland patriarch, William. Abigail vows to uphold the honor of the Howlands and take revenge on the people who hurt her family.

There is a real sense of place in the descriptions so the reader feels enveloped by the Southern atmosphere. The descriptions of William poling through the swamp, with snakes falling from tree branches, are especially vivid. Building in layers, this is a powerful book with strong people--Abigail, William, and Margaret--as the three main characters. The book shows the social structure, racial prejudice, and political games of the time.

The Keepers of the House was published in 1964 during the Civil Rights movement. The Ku Klux Klan reacted by burning a cross at Grau's home in Metairie, Louisiana. The author won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this novel.

[Sue K H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book, I don't even know what to say.  I only became aware of the novel because of my Pulitzer challenge and had never heard of Shirley Ann Grau either.  This book digs deep into family and racism in ways that I hadn't thought about before, specifically how deeply it can affect the family for generations. 

It's hard to say much without giving things away but this book is a keeper, one to be read again and again.  It's formed with intricate poetic layers that can't be fully absorbed in one reading.

What's especially remarkable is how courageous this story was for her time.  You can tell that Shirley Ann Grau is someone who stood up to bullies.   I'm off to add more of her books to my tbr!

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

To call this book "an indictment of racism" was quite an exaggeration. Most of this book is almost a stream of consciousness family history - not terribly interesting if it's not your family. Maybe the inclusion of a mixed race marriage was bold in the 1960s so the Pulitzer Prize committee could congratulate itself about how progressive it was. Otherwise, I have no idea why this book won the prize.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 This book read the Pulitzer awhile ago and it is a expose somewhat on the race tensions in the south. I enjoyed reading about William the best, really liked how he didn't care what anyone thought, but took care of his family.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I grabbed this book in one of Audible's every-other-day BOGO sales. Not that I'm complaining, but I have FIFTEEN audiobooks purchased and waiting on me right now... so maybe like a week or two would be a nice break before the next sale has me picking up 4 or 6 more. (Like, seriously, Audible. That'd be great.) And I've noticed a trend with the books that I've selected from these sales. I've found myself gravitating recently toward books that deal with slavery and race relations. It's not a conscious thing, I don't go looking for this trait... They were just on sale, and I liked the sample, so I took a chance and realized after I started listening to the book that it fits my trend.

The Keepers of the House was no different. I thought that the book was a southern gothic ghost story (which, on hindsight, wasn't that far off the mark) and I figured that there would be racial issues somewhere in there, but I didn't realize that the issues WERE the story.

This book is beautifully written, and extremely lush in the descriptions. It was great listening to this on audio, because it was easy to just let my mind drift and absorb the imagery and history and sense of place being described. In that aspect, this book deserves 5 stars, no doubt.

But this book failed in other aspects. I felt that a lot of the narrative was unnecessarily bloated. This is the story of the Howlands, and how their family changed and how their secrets affected the present day (mid-1960s) when this was written. In that regard, I don't need to know about every snake in every tree lining every swamp branch during William Howland's personal game of Find-The-Still. That has no bearing on the story at all and just felt like filler. His RETURN from his mid-life crisis adventure allowed him to meet Margaret, but the intricately described trip itself was unnecessary. All I, an outsider listening to the story of the Howland history, needed to know was that he went on a quest to find a whiskey still as a personal bet to himself, and on his way back home he ran into the girl that he would hire as a housekeeper. I don't need to know what color shirt he was wearing, or how many steps he had to take between point A and point B, unless it has something to add to the story.

Likewise, I felt that our narrator, Abigail Howland (the 2nd), was not very adept at communicating the relevant bits of her story. She's William Howland's granddaughter, daughter of Abigail Howland (William's daughter), and mother to Abigail Howland. I'm guessing that just as it was a point of pride for every generation to have a William Howland, it was an unspoken point that there should be an Abigail Howland as well. This helps illustrate my point, actually. Abigail2 goes to lengths to tell the reader that there's always a William in every generation. It's tradition... but she neglects to mention that it seems to be the same in the female line with the name Abigail.

But more than that one little example, I felt that she assumed the reader had an understanding of people's motives and actions (including her own), rather than telling the story properly and filling in an outsider with this info. Maybe some don't mind this, and are OK with interpreting the unspoken bits, but I'm not. She's telling me her story, so I want her to tell it in full. Give me the information that matters rather than the irrelevant details, like what color a dress was.

It's unusual for me to care about or identify with a character less as I get to know them throughout the course of the story. Even if I don't particularly LIKE a character, usually I can still identify with them or find something about them that I can understand, unless they were a poorly written character. But the more I got to know Abigail, the more I felt like I didn't understand her at all. I kept thinking of her as this person who will bridge the gap, who has grown up in this, at the time, unusual situation and understands it. But the more I felt like that, the more wrong she proved me. Her reunion with Nina was baffling to me. I understand the mindset of the time... but I'm specifically talking about Abigail's hostility. I just don't understand her. On the one hand, she seems to NOT be a racist, and not agree with the prevailing white supremacist attitudes, but she displays a desire to punish Margaret's children for being born black. Or, maybe just for daring to let their existence be known about after they were sent away as children. I don't understand her at all, and the more I got to know her, the more I disliked her.

If it wasn't for this aspect, I think this book would likely have been a 4 or 5 star book. But either I missed something critical or I was supposed to interpret it (or maybe those are the same things), and I just felt like the conclusion of this story, instead of being powerful and meaningful, just left me confused and annoyed.

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The South
Race
and People

This was a brave novel to have written in the early 1960s. It remains a brave novel today, which is a sad comment on our society.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW!! Go get this book!! If you like short reviews stop here and follow that suggestion. For more thoughts, read along:

There has got to be a glitch in the Goodreads rating system (as of the writing of this review this book is rated at 3.82). Seriously, this is an epic tale that is not to be missed. Had it not been a selection within the group "On the Southern Literary Trail", I would have no doubt missed it. An epic story of how a long family line amassed not only good fortune, but heartache, love, betrayal, revenge, and self confidence in a not so typical "blood thicker than water" family.

Grau has a way of weaving this account through varied narrators over varied generations, yet the connective tissue is stronger than the sinews she uses within her text to depict change from one generation to the next. She can turn the script on a dime; shifting from one side story to another mid-sentence without pushing in the clutch in the slightest......yet, she didn't perturb me in the slightest as can often be the result when author's get fancy trying to twist me around like that.

There is a flavor of Faulkner in her writings, and I would describe the path she takes as almost string of consciousness but without the confusion that usually ensues. Unlike some multi-generation books, I didn't feel the need to sketch out a family tree reference piece......it flows. Trying like heck to avoid a spoiler, but I would simply say hang on until the end- you will not be disappointed.

[Wyndy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've visited several swamps in my lifetime in several different states. My husband and I recently spent two days touring a cypress swamp and rice paddy in South Carolina, with alligators blocking our trail and heron rookeries and snapping turtles and swarming gnats. But we weren't IN the swamp in a skiff in the 1800's. We had boardwalks and footpaths, cellphones and water bottles, sunscreen and bug spray. Shirley Ann Grau describes a pre-tourist Deep South cypress swamp like no one I've ever read (except maybe Tim Gautreaux and Peter Matthiessen):

"He poled through miles of moss-hung cypress stands where gators splashed away from his bow and moccasins swam alongside with their bright intelligent stare . . . As the sun dropped, a cloud of biting gnats rose from the grasses - the saw grass and the oyster grass, and the duck grass - until the sky was dark with them. William felt his whole body begin to tingle. Not just his hands and face and neck, not just the exposed skin, but his whole body burned as the tiny insects slipped inside his clothing."

But this Alabama swamp and the house the first William built on a bluff above a river in the early 1800's is just part of the story. Grau writes a lot about loss in this book, through the voice of Abigail Mason Howland Tolliver, as she proceeds through the lives of six generations of Howlands - the 'keepers of the house': "They are dead, all of them. I am caught and tangled around by their doings. It is as if their lives left a weaving of invisible threads in the air of this house, of this town, of this county. And I stumbled and fell into them."

With unhurried prose, she also probes the universal themes of Mother Nature's wrath and glory, the pull and push of family and home, the casualties of prejudice and small-town politics, and the bittersweet satisfaction of revenge - slowly and perfectly exacted. Personally, I preferred hanging out with William in a skiff in the swamp, hunting for a hidden likker still, to the final half of the book. But it's easy to see why this won the Pulitzer in 1965. 3.5 stars, rounded up for Grau's phenomenal descriptions of the natural world and for the integrity of William Howland.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written book. There are some slow, though gorgeous, descriptions of one of the characters traveling through a swamp, but don't let that put you off. It's all building up to a great story with important themes. Though it's different than All the King's Men, I was reminded of that book quite a few times as I was reading this one.

Read with a local group for LEH's RELIC program, "Encounter in Louisiana."

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

November evenings are quiet and still and dry. The frost-stripped trees and the bleached grasses glisten and shine in the small light. In the winter-emptied fields granite outcroppings gleam white and stark. The bones of the earth, old people call them. In the deepest fold of the land--to the southwest where the sun went down solid and red not long ago--the Providence river reflects a little grey light. The river is small this time of year, drought-shrunken. It turns back the sky, dully, like an old mirror.
[...]
As I stand there in the immaculate evening I do not find it strange to be fighting an entire town, a whole county. I am alone, yes, of course I am, but I am not particularly afraid. The house was empty and lonely before--I just did not realize it--it's no worse now. I know that I shall hurt as much as I have been hurt. I shall destroy as much as I have lost.

It's a way to live, you know. It's a way to keep your heart ticking under the sheltering arches of your ribs. And that's enough for now.

These are the first and last paragraphs of the brief first section of Chapter 1 of The Keepers of the House, a wonderful tale of several generations of a Southern family. It is a delicious slice of Southern culture and of the painful effects of sex-roles and racial conflicts on the lives of the family's members. The characters are strong and interesting and well-rounded. The prose is clear and evocative of the Southern climate and landscape. If you want a taste of Mississippi across generations and don't want to do the hard work of reading Faulkner, this one will give you an easier, but in many ways similar, experience. This one earned its Pulitzer.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 5 out of 5]

“She was his wife, only she wasn’t … the law said they couldn’t marry.”

At its heart, this outstanding novel is about a loving, to-death-do-us-part interracial relationship between a strong Black woman and a wealthy White man, who live in rural Alabama during the early 1900s. The novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, starts with the backstory of the relationship between Margaret Carmichael and William Howland. Trust the author here; when parts of the story seem to drift off on tangents (e.g., a search for a liquor still), know that nothing in this novel is tangential. Later parts of the novel cover the nature and longevity of Margaret and William’s relationship, and the consequences that follow from it, given the racial norms and anti-Black prejudice that dominated the South at the time.

“As I stand there in the immaculate evening I do not find it strange to be fighting an entire town, a whole county.”

The story and characters are brilliantly drawn, both serving a clear purpose. The success of the couple’s mixed-race children—for example, going to graduate school or moving to Paris—and the way their White family members learn about, react to, and are affected by Margaret and William’s interracial relationship, both provide a damning condemnation of white supremacists and their racist policies (e.g., school segregation).

“Her face was black and ours were white, but we were together anyhow. Her life and his. And ours.”

There are also feminist themes in this novel. Most notably, there are two strong female characters, one Black and one White. Both are abandoned by men in their lives. Both make smart, brave, independent decisions, without relying on men. Neither is tied down by traditional sexual norms.

“It happens like that and it’s not the less precious. It’s the thing you value and not the man.”

Yet, neither of the strong female characters is without fault. Rather, both are written realistically and put into hard situations where easy answers, moral perfection, and total forgiveness are impossible. For example, William’s granddaughter, Abigail, who is essentially raised by Margaret, ends up marrying a racist politician who will say and do anything to get elected.

“I’m a practical man … I say it because it’s part of the game.”

One key part of the story is the Howland land and house, which has been in the family for around 150 years. The generations that have lived there have included many different types of people and experienced many tragedies. For example, there is a charred railing on the stairs that was burned long ago when bandits set fire to the house and murdered a young woman living there. The family’s past experiences, the ghosts in the house, play an important role in the story, and make the current residents’ decisions even more powerful.

“It is as if their lives left a weaving of invisible threads in the air of this house, of this town, of this county. And I stumbled and fell into them.”

“Sometimes he felt the age of the house, felt the people who had lived in it peer over his shoulder, wondering and watching what he was doing.”

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1964, The Keepers of the House is a multi-generational family saga set in the American deep south about family secrets and racial prejudice. The family estate is the focal point, treated almost as if it were a character. The narrator, Abigail Howland Mason, relates her family’s history, covering a time period 1812 to the 1960s and focusing on her widower grandfather, William, and his black housekeeper, Margaret, before turning to her personal story. After Abigail’s white mother dies of consumption, she grows up in her grandfather’s house. William and Margaret have three children, who become Abigail’s siblings. The townspeople appear to accept the relationship between William and Margaret, but a family secret will eventually disrupt the community.

Grau employs deeply flawed characters to examine mixed race relationships, family dynamics, racial intolerance, political aspirations, and mob violence. The author provides a detailed background for each primary character, and initially proceeds at a rather slow pace. Near the end, the pace shifts into high gear, leading up to a dramatic, confrontational climax. It is densely written, with descriptive and evocative writing. This book was published during the height of the American Civil Rights movement. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1965.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in February 2014 my husband mentioned I needed to read this book. I said "yeah, I'll get to it" but here I am 2 1/2 years later saying "he was right and I was wrong for putting it off". I love a strong female character (she does have some flaws, but who doesn't). You see some real independence by the end of the book. I also like that it hints at a daughter who is following in the footsteps of her mother. This is a great multi-generational story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Don't skip the epilogue....you won't be disappointed in the ending. "You bring them a message from me....."

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Add this to your lists. It is very good. Listen to the audiobook narrated by Anna Fields, if you can. Read it or listen to it, but don't let it slide to the bottom of your heap of books to be read!

This book stands out as one of the better about the race situation in the South before the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. What is it like to have both black and white blood? Where do you belong? How do you deal with this? What do you do and what do yo not do? In this book you will see people who have made different choices, and you will think about why they made those choices. The reader will ponder what choices they might make.

The book gives you more than an in-depth understanding of being a bi-racial person. The feel of the South and how history played out there for those living in the South, that is what you get in spades. The Depression, WW2, the Korean War, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement slide by, but the focus is on the people living there in the South. Is it set in Louisiana or Mississippi? Exactly where isn't really clear or really that important except that there are swamps nearby and you are taken in there. You will not forget that experience. The Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition and a sense of the racial inequality that existed in this time and place is what your are enveloped in. And what would you do if you were there - a Black or a White or mixed?

But what makes this book better than others that focus on the question of bi-racial identity? This certainly isn't the first book to tackle the question! It is in the way the author expresses herself. It is in the way she describes their lives and their surroundings: the nearby swamp, the fires, the weddings, the funerals and an old man watching his children and their children and the following generations grow up, watching and observing and making his own life choices. By the way, look at the title - you can see the generations slip by.

There is clever dialog and subtle humor:
Question:"Who are you calling?"
Answer: "The barn!"
When you hear this you will laugh. The Southern dialect and the slow desultory tempo with which Anna Fields narrates the book is the icing on the cake.

And the plot - the story finishes with a bang. You will be surprised. There is so much I want to tell you about William. What discussions you can have about the characters!

What makes this story so perfect is in the author's way of telling it.