The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch

Richardson and Gail design their favorite daughters' lives that carry consequences over a lifetime neither one bargained for.Elsie sees her parents' legacy-the inept spoiling and calculated detachments-as the filigree setting for every family secret. When the girls aim for each their own cache of treasure, someone is expendable. Maybe even a parent. One sister steals the estate, and another loses herself to a world of eccentrics. Sister Melanie, having endured years of harm and...
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Richardson and Gail design their favorite daughters' lives that carry consequences over a lifetime neither one bargained for.Elsie sees her parents' legacy-the inept spoiling and calculated detachments-as the filigree setting for every family secret. When the girls aim for each their own cache of treasure, someone is expendable. Maybe even a parent. One sister steals the estate, and another loses herself to a world of eccentrics. Sister Melanie, having endured years of harm and humiliation, is bereft when their father dies leaving her alone in a dilapidated house and recorded notebooks to decipher.What Elsie covets is the truth. She discovers Richardson and Gail's unscrupulous affections span the geography of San Francisco Bay, Phoenix Arizona, Oklahoma City, and finally to the shadow of the Rockies. By the third generation of the Finch family saga, Elsie laces their stories together through the years of blistering tales. Unraveling layers of animosity and punishment, a certain poetry transforms Elsie's stages of grief.Praise for Elsie Finch"...brave and startlingly candid; Elsie Finch is lodged in my heart of hearts...Her character manages to explore the darker side of human foibles-while at the same time weaving in a bright thread of hope." - Kathy Joy, Editor"ELSIE FINCH helps us remember that every family member has a unique point of view. I relate to each of them and believe in what turned them as they are, one way or the other." - Sandy Fisher, Coach S.A."Puns for chapter headings is a first for me. The puzzle at each new segment, such as "Small Matters," called me into a moral inventory of my own 'small matters'. " - L.B.W.___________________________________THE FEARLESS MORAL INVENTORY OF ELSIE FINCH - recreates a three-generational narrative of a peculiar American family blending intimacy and loyalty with the revelation that a parent who, failing in marital intimacy, lives vicariously through a favored child.When animosity becomes a full-blown personality disorder, love reaches its limits. This is a path leading to redemption for only the very brave.