House of Happy Endings

House of Happy Endings is a memoir by Leslie Garis about growing up in an imaginative household in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her parents were the prolific authors behind the Uncle Wiggily stories and many popular children's series, and their home was a place where writing and invention seemed to come easily. Beneath that charmed surface, her father, who hoped to succeed as a playwright and novelist, struggled with the feeling that he could not match his parents' achievements. His unhappiness grew into a serious mental illness marked by severe mood swings, substance misuse and crippling depression, and the whole family absorbed the strain. Garis traces how these contrasts shaped her own coming of age.