The Kingsley House

The story of the Kingsley family of Livinia, Michigan goes back to Nathan who build the house for his bride, Mary, in 1843. This family is the ancestors of the author, Arliss Ryan. She wrote about 5 generations of Kingsleys starting when Livinia was a farming community and gradually turned into a suburb of Detroit. As these people left no journals, Ms. Ryan used her imagination to tell this tale....... We see thru the years many joys and sorrows that this family suffered: love, marriages, children of one family wiped out from Dyptheria, mental illness and suicide.........There are many lovable, strong characters in this saga as well as some not so lovable such as Nathan's son, Horace who is a born scoundrel always looking for ways to cheat someone so he can benefit financially........This great novel brings to life over 100 yrs. of the American history of a house and the many generations that came from the first settlers of it. Wonderful story!

Arliss Ryan does a great job of weaving the history of her family from one generation to the next. The characters were interesting and I wanted to see what would happen next. I had to keep myself from peeking to see the next generation's family tree, so I wouldn't spoil the ending of the current chapter!Well written, and captivating. All of 7 us in our bookclub enjoyed it.

Everyone has a family, and every family has stories to tell. Most of them are already half fiction by the time they come down to us from our parents and grandparents. Like hitchhikers, these stories are looking for a ride -- a vehicle to carry them onward from one generation to the next. A novelist is well equipped to construct such a vehicle. He or she can create a family history that captures ancestral dreams along with the successes and failures en route. In "The Kingsley House" Arliss Ryan succeeds admirably in recording, creating, reinventing the history of her family for four generations. A prologue builds suspense -- where are they taking the house Nathan Kingsley built for his bride Mary in 1843? That question is not resolved until an epilogue dated 1993. Each of the six intervening sections is rich in atmosphere and in the details of time and place -- Livonia, Michigan, from 1843 to 1948. The reader encounters runaway slaves, phony spiritualists, a diptheria epidemic, a family scoundrel, maternal grief and suicide, and a love letter in the sky. The sections mesh nicely with each other. Characters are well drawn and fully developed, and many scenes are deeply affecting. Horace, the scoundrel of the piece, borders on caricature; yet the four coffins he constructs for his children make him only too human. Family trees at the beginning of each section allow the reader to ponder the changes that have occurred in the household. In my opinion, the book and its author deserve a wide audience.

The Kingsley House by Arliss Ryan turned out to be a book I didn't want to put down. At first it seemed simply written, but suddenly I found myself "seeing" the characters so clearly - feeling their joys and sorrows, moving through four generations of American history. As you read through her mostly fictional tales of four generations of her own family living in this historic home in Livonia Michigan, you feel their family traits passed from family to family, from grandfather to nephew, from mother to daughter. And you feel the urban sprawl of Detroit grow further out into the farmlands, encroaching on small town values and childhood memories. For anyone who has a family home that has passed from generation to generation, you will recognize the way it feels to walk through a room and envision your grandfather sitting in the same spot you do now, watching fires in the same fireplace, taking books from the same bookcases. Arliss Ryan writes in her Author's Note at the end of the book that she hopes her ancestors will approve of her story. I am sure they will - and her readers will too!

If you've ever looked at your family tree and wondered about the stories behind the simple structure of names, dates, and the lines connecting them, The Kingsley House can open your mind to the possibilities. This is a wonderfully imagined re-creation of the lives that inhabited a house built by pioneers in the first half of the 1800s in Livonia, Michigan. What makes the re-creation of these lives special is that they are the ancestors of the author, a first-time novelist who demonstrates a first-class ability to weave story after story with each passing generation.Each of the novel's six books begins with the family tree, updated to reflect the marriages and births and deaths that set the stage for the following chapters. You can almost join the author in her creative imagining of how the family will change over the decades, of how the children were influenced by their parents, became parents themselves, and passed on to their children a mix of both old and new family traits while the children branched out themselves in traditional manner, or struck out in startling new directions.In some ways, this book reminded me of Philip Caputo's "The Voyage", which also re-creates a family's life in the past and present, and of other novels that have traced a family's generations, such as Meredith Tax's "Rivington Street" and "Union Square"."The Voyage" has a central, unifying mystery, about why a father should suddenly send his sons away alone on a wooden ship. Tax's novels are unified by the political events surrounding and involving the family. The unifying strength of "The Kingsley House" is more modest, the icon of the house itself and the family tree that flourished under its roof. But this is an icon that can resonate with every reader lucky enough to be part of a family that has a homestead, a place where the generations multiplied and, from time to time, gather to celebrate their lives. The example of the author in recreating her ancestors as fully imagined individuals is a wonderful gift that readers can take to their hearts and exercise for themselves. I know that as I have read each chapter, I've wondered how my own ancestors reacted to the events of their times, met their mates, raised their children. Arliss Ryan shows how this can be done.A note on the book itself is deserved here. St. Martin's Press has published many books that I enjoy, and its treatment of this first novel is superb, from jacket design to typeface and illustrations. This is a book that, like the house built by Nathan Kingsley, is a finely crafted work, and a proper home for the lives within and their visitors.This is a book I intend to tell my friends and relatives about, especially those who have been capturing oral histories, and keeping the family photo albums.