A year in the lives, dreams, and awakenings of the Protheroe family . . . Like most families, the Protheroes live together but dream in solitude: daydreams, night dreams, and the reveries of memory. Although much love connects them, they are alone within themselves, as are we all, each orbiting a unique inner sun coalescing from the raw material of birth and circumstance. The much-anticipated arrival of a new baby, affectionally called the Bump, affects them all in both their dreams and waking life, but their expectations are upended when Dion is born brain-damaged. Despite that twist of fate, the new addition soon becomes a powerful in-fluence on his parents, his five sisters, and his grandparents. As the year unfolds, the reader travels through the minds of three generations: a group of wonderfully individual people who define family in a wholly original way. Chapter One Louise was crouched awkwardly by the little rock garden. She worked slowly and considered each strand of quack grass as she plucked it from the silver mound in a lazy and syrupy way. The afternoon sun wore her into a numbed heaviness. Sweat trickled between breasts and belly. She felt huge. She unbent a little and shifted toward the dianthus. It had thrived over the summer and sat fussily beside the sandstone, a lady's hat topped in Sunday pink. As she pulled new weeds from its border of earth, she noticed something glint beside her hand. A tiny lamé purse. The twins had been heartless with their handed-down treasures. They used to stage wars, leaving Barbie and GI Joe casualties, dismembered or headless, all over the yard. Louise brushed particles of dirt from the purse and placed the strap around the smallest finger of her left hand. It was the sort of discovery Celia might easily have made when she was two, following her mother as she turned the neglected and dry-packed city dirt twice with a long-handled spade. Louise had looked back and found her, plump fingers deft as a monkey's, picking out broken glass and bits of rusted metal and dropping them into her toy pail. Celia unearthed things Louise missed: an iridescent bronze beetle struggling with a cracked wing, a faded inch-high red cowboy, two blackened dimes. The potatoes she'd grown softened and sprouted that first winter in a warm basement. Most of the newspaper-wrapped green tomatoes ended up in the garbage. She'd spent every spare hour for weeks freezing corn and beets and peas, refusing her mother's offers of canning equipment. She couldn't risk scalding her children. Five daughters needed a lawn, a paddling pool, and a swing set. The vegetable patch wasn't much by her mother's standards; it shrank into a quilt of the simplest plants-squares of marigold, thyme, alyssum, chives, tiny tims-separated from the fruit trees by a narrow brick path Gavin had laid. The garden changed every year. She grew it for love, finally, the only way it made sense. Her knees were stiff, and a charley horse began to seize a foot. Louise worked her way upright and waited until the breeze caught under her smock and cooled the dampness of her thighs. Stupid to be out here this long. She staggered into the porch and through the kitchen door, kicked off her sandals, and sprawled into their old platform rocker. The rocker was motionless for the hour as she slept, her breathing deep and rhythmic. A blue bottle fly wandered in from the dining room and bounced around the room, making angry little cat sounds. Buzz growl. Settled on her belly. A tiny fist punched upward, hard, from under her smock, and the fly rose, spinning, surprised. Louise mumbled something, dreaming about salty seas and the Kraken. The fist retracted. The fly circled for another landing, analyzed strands of black hair, freckled shoulders, then touched down on the same place. Punch. The Kraken. It dri

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