The House Is Still There

THE HOUSE IS STILL THERE

Thirty years ago, a boy spent one summer in his grandmother's house on the shore of Lake Huron.

The house sat at the end of a long driveway lined with maples. It had forty stairs down to the water, an orange front door, and a view of the freighters moving through the dark. His grandmother restored every room herself. She fed everyone who came up the drive. She loved him fiercely.

That was the summer of the rats. The summer of the midnight walk. The summer he began noticing the things no one else seemed willing to see.

Now, decades later, a box of his mother's belongings and an old videotape have brought him back to a place he has spent most of his life trying not to remember. As he searches through the artifacts left behind by the people who shaped him, he finds himself drawn back into a childhood marked by family loyalty, buried grief, and a house that seemed to take far more than it ever gave.

Moving between the sunlit freedom of the American West and a Michigan shoreline haunted by memory, The House Is Still There is a literary novel about inheritance, love, addiction, and the things that remain long after we leave them behind.

For readers of Stephen King's 11/22/63 and The Body, Peter Heller's The Guide, and Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides.

Or, if you want something much more commercial and punchy:

Thirty years ago, an eleven-year-old boy spent one summer in his grandmother's house on Lake Huron.

The house had an orange door, forty stairs to the water, and a way of getting inside people.

His grandmother loved him. His mother was trying to save him. Neither could stop what that summer would become.

Now, an old videotape has forced him to look back.

As forgotten objects pull him into memories he has spent decades avoiding, he finds himself confronting a question he has never been able to answer:

Was there something wrong with the house?

Or did the house simply reveal what was already there?

The House Is Still There is a haunting literary novel about family, memory, addiction, and the things we carry long after we think we've escaped them.