The Dutch House

Author/Guide: Ann Patchett

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: The Dutch House has visitors past and present…

ISBN: 978-1526614964
Genre: Fiction, Historical

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What you need to know before your trail

Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish mansion. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. Life is coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners in the frames of their oil paintings.

Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives. The siblings are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own exile is that of their mother’s: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.

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Travel Guide

Booktrail it down to The Dutch House in Pennslyvania

Shortly after WW2, there is huge change in society and a great deal in Cyril Conroy’s life. He gains wealth and goes on to buy the rather fine and architecturally impressive the Dutch House.

“The stunning success of the house would be attributed to the architect….”

“The house we later wound up with – was a singular confluence of talent and luck.”

“The Dutch House was the place where those Dutch people with the unpronounceable names lived. Seen from several vantage points of distance, it appeared to float several inches above the hill it sat on.”

This house is of course fictional and is set somewhere in the Pennsylvania suburbs. It’s a focal point for the many narratives of the story, the highs and lows of life, the ties which bring the family back to the house.