“The first time it happened,” I said, “I nearly choked on my surprise.”

So begins Margaret Wilson’s telling of a relationship gone awry. Combine domestic danger (present) and safety (past) with a rich description of the landscape they share—an old farmhouse in Maine—and Household becomes a narrative of tension and sweetness, a balance of abuse and refuge.

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Household is a beautiful book about something terrible—the insidiousness and devastation of emotional abuse. Lyrically, but with the force of a sledgehammer, Deb Gould conveys what it feels like to be terrorized by someone you love.

—Patrisha McLean, founder/president of Finding Our Voices (FindingOurVoices.net)

Deborah Gould’s Household examines the necessity, the power, and the peril of relationship. It’s an intricate and sometimes harrowing journey of connects and disconnects—to loved ones, to home, to history, to oneself— that delivers the reader to an inexorable conclusion. It’s a story for our times.

By Deborah Gould