This enchanting story by Alice Adams is about friendship, love (for people and places), and marriage. The narrator recalls how, after she and her mother moved from Boston to North Carolina, a lifelong friendship developed after she fell permanently in love with a house, with a family of three people and with an area of countryside. She forms a strong bond with each member of the family, and later learns that their shared fondness for her may have been the only thing that kept them together. Themes include friendship, mother-daughter relationships, marriage, city vs. country living, the beauty of nature.
The story paints a rather dim view of marriage. The parents of both the narrator and Harriet had marriage problems, Harriet married several times, and the narrator married a man whom I still like and enjoy. (No mention of love?)
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