The Tumble Inn - (New York State) by William Loizeaux (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Tired of their high school teaching jobs and discouraged by their failed attempts at conceiving a child, Mark and Fran Finley decide they need a change in their lives. Abruptly, they leave their friends and family in suburban New Jersey to begin anew as innkeepers on a secluded lake in the Adirondack Mountains. There they muddle through their first season at the inn, serving barely edible dinners to guests, stranding themselves in chest-deep snowdrifts, and somehow, miraculously, amid swarms of ravenous black flies, conceiving a child, a girl they name Nat. Years later, when Mark and Fran are nearing middle age and Nat is a troubled teenager, Mark's life is ripped apart, forever changed, and he must choose between returning to his old home in New Jersey or trying to rebuild what is left of his life and family in the place of his greatest joy and deepest sorrow. The Tumble Inn is a moving drama about home and about the fragility and resilience of love.

Review Quotes

The Tumble Inn exploring love, grief and the power of place, is set in an isolated Adirondack bed-and-breakfast. It follows a young couple's adventures as new innkeepers, their struggles to conceive a child, and, finally, a husband and daughter's efforts to rebuild their family in the aftermath of a tragic car accident.-- "Adirondack Life"

William Loizeaux . . . knows his Adirondacks inside and out, turning daily doings into translucent and often lyrical moments, full of details rendered luminous by the clear bright prose in its also perceptive awareness of neighbors, the nuances of seasonal changes, the great lake and the array of birds, brooks, black flies and the like.

-- "Providence Journal"

In this moving novel, Mark Finley, our narrator, attempts to reconcile the pull of a place and the pull of an anguished heart. William Loizeaux is a writer of profound insight and empathy.-- "Ron Rash, author of Serena"

Loizeaux's novel about two high school teachers who pull up stakes to run an inn in the Adirondacks is a crystalline evocation of marriage, family life, and community.-- "Reader's Digest"

The 'everyone' characters in the book help the central characters weather their personal storms, making the novel heartwarming and inspiring. . . . So if you open this novel expecting Adventures in Innkeeping, be prepared for something deeper as you go along.-- "New York Journal of Books"

This powerful novel is not just about its characters. It's about something more. It evolves into a story about life itself; about how to balance in the storms, the weal and woe, the unpredictable and unrepeatable circumstances of a life lived fully and well in spite of our will; in spite of our plans. These characters discover in the process of this story that our choices are only vaguely instrumental in what eventually becomes of us. You will care so much for these people. As with all of William Loizeaux's work, this novel is written from the heart, deeply moving and memorable.-- "Robert Bausch, author of A Hole in the Earth, and Far as the Eye Can See"

William Loizeaux's sympathetic portrayal of ordinary people struggling to live with each other in an [Adirondack] environment both beautiful and rough echoes Kent Haruf's novels set in eastern Colorado. And like Haruf's characters, the Finleys are often surprised by the consequences of the choices they themselves have made--they get what they wished for, but it isn't what they expected.-- "Adirondack Daily Enterprise"

About the Author

William Loizeaux is writer in residence in the Department of English at Boston University. In addition to several essays and stories, Loizeaux has published two novels for children and two memoirs. His memoir, Anna: A Daughter's Life was a New York Times Notable Book.