A haunted house

But when you think about saints, I don't imagine any of them made their families happy.

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

Ann Patchett's wonderful 2019 novel The Dutch House is dominated by a house and by a missing mother who abandoned her children because of that house.

Danny, the narrator, and his older sister, Maeve, grew up in the spacious house in the Philadelphia area built by a wealthy couple with the name of VanHoebeek, whose large portraits dominate the interior. Their father bought the house for their mother, Elna, who hated it. A would-be nun whom their father took from the convent to marry, Elna had humble tastes and a desire to serve the poor. She couldn't stand living in a mansion and so left her family behind and went to India.

The novel actually begins when their father brings Andrea into the house. She's a woman more in love with the Dutch House than with their father, and it's not clear that he loves her either. Yet he cannot resist her strong will, and they soon marry, she moving her two young daughters into the house. Maeve and Danny soon feel second-class, a feeling confirmed when their father dies prematurely and Andrea kicks them both out with little more than the clothes on their backs.

The novel covers decades. The only thing their father's will leaves for his own children is an education trust to be shared with Andrea's children. Maeve insists that Danny pursue a medical degree, even though he wants to become a real estate tycoon and a landlord like his father. But going to medical school will use up most of the trust, their only way of striking back against Andrea.

Maeve becomes a valued employee in a frozen vegetable company, while Danny eventually goes into real estate as he always wanted and starts his own family. Meanwhile the two siblings frequently park in from of the Dutch House to remember the past and think evil thoughts about their stepmother and, at least as far as Danny is concerned, about their mother.

Then Elna reenters their life at a crucial time, the saint returning home when she is most needed.

Patchett's novel is irresistible from the first page. You might be tempted to call the house her main character, except that all her human characters, including the servants in the Dutch House, are so real, so interesting that they make this great house a minor character in comparison.