What We Had: A Memoir

A brief memoir by James Chace of life growing up in the southeastern Massachusetts city of Fall River -- once the largest cotton spinning city in the world -- now a sad hulk and husk of its former self. This is where Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her father forty whacks, but Chace writes an amazingly poignant story of the decline of a Yankee family from privilege to irrelevance. From his grandfather, the former president of the Massachusetts State Senate to his brother, a crazed World War II war hero, Chace tells a elegant story of a family, a city, and a society in decline. Not on the par of "Goodbye to All That" -- but nevertheless a good book about the slide of a Yankee family and one man's determination to make sense of it.