Thanksgiving Night: A Novel

Will Butterfield can’t believe it. His 75-year-old mother, Holly, is drunk and threatening to jump off the roof. Again. Holly and Fiona, another elderly relative, won’t stop tormenting Will and his wife Elizabeth with their bizarre (though often amusing) antics. Between Will’s worries about his bookstore, The Heart’s Ease, and Elizabeth’s troublesome high school students, dealing with “the crazies” has become just too much. But then something unexpected happens — Henry Ward, a neighborhood handyman, meets the two old women, and he, his daughter Alison, and grandchildren are drawn into the Butterfields’ lives in surprising ways. Both a comedy and a love story — a first for Bausch — Thanksgiving Night is about the real meaning of family, and one particular clan that has many reasons to be thankful.