When war-shattered Sergeant John Weldon falls in love with his best friend's sister life gets complicated.
When morphine-addicted Civil War veteran John Weldon marries into the comfortably suburban McCullough family on the eve of Reconstruction and the Indian Wars, life gets complicated. How will Weldon be able to hide his addiction from the family he resents and admires, keep his standing in the army and find the strength to survive the tragedies that come with loving others? The House on Tenafly Road is a rich, layered story about finding family where you least expect it and having the courage to do what's right by the people who love you. John Weldon spends a lifetime journeying across the frontier only to find that he already has a home.
Professional Reviews
Editors' Choice Historical Novel Society
After his service in the Civil War, Sergeant John Weldon, haunted and nearly shattered by his experiences on and off the battlefield (which left him with lingering acute pain and a morphine addiction), makes his way to the picturesque new village of Englewood in New Jersey at the invitation of the spirited and welcoming McCullough family. He falls in love with the daughter of the house, fiercely intelligent and compassionate Kate, but he’s traumatized by the war and its aftereffects, and in the course of a long and very satisfyingly complex novel, Morris throws dozens of obstacles in the path of their relationship (including some extremely evocative flashbacks of Weldon’s war memories).
The various members of the MacCullough family are portrayed with careful detail and some moments of unexpected humor, but it’s the tortured John Weldon who commands the book; his slow and halting search for personal redemption makes for mesmerizing reading. Recommended. Steve Donoghue
Shanghai Escapist grabs the faint-of-heart right from the get-go and serves up an ultimatum: What would you do if caught in the same circumstances? From the opening scene, the reader is tossed into the maze of daily intrigue as it existed in 1960s-70
