Her parents' divorce, when it came, was a relief. He tried in vain to control Maud's mother, a whirlwind of charisma and passion given to feverish projects: thirty rescue cats, and a church in the family's living room where she performed exorcisms.

Maud's father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the 'purity' of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud's maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Her mother's grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Her mother's father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR Maud Newton's ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. a literary feat that simultaneously builds and excavates identity.'- The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick - An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family-and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves-in this 'brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation' ( The Boston Globe ).

Ancestor trouble book review