Nicolas Lepore Lepore itibaren Wörlitz, Almanya
** spoiler alert ** The story of 3 generations of woman. Nealie leaves her abusive father and runs away to Georgetown where she falls for a rich man and longs to live in a house she calls Bride's house. She gets pregnant, he leaves, she marries a miner whi is secretly successful and moves to bride's house. She dies giving birth to Pearl. Pearl is loved and sheltered to extreme by her father. She falls in love with a poor man. Gets pregnant and gives the baby up. The man becomes rich and they marry and have Susan. Susan loves Joe but he is slow at showing his love. She has an affair with Peter before he goes to Korea. Joe asks her marry him, she realizes she is pregnant with Peter's baby but Peter dies. Joe marries her knowing she is pregnant with another man's baby.
I stopped reading this self-serving piece of tripe around page 250. A much more succinct title would have been "Theodore von Karman: I'm smarter than everyone else."
A Partridge Family on thalidomide. Pretty much the only thing Maura Cronin every did for me was point out this book in the used store downtown. A couple decide to populate their own freak show by systematically causing damage to the woman's children in utero- a happy family of traveling flippers, dwarves, hunchbacks, and more is the result.