My Fathers' Houses : Memoir of a Family

Bayonne prepared me well for a larger life and a larger world. I knew who I was and where I was from. I was connected by innumerable little cords to people and places that gave me strength and identity. In this remarkable memoir, Steven V. Roberts tells the story of his grandparents, his parents, and his own life by vividly bringing a period, a place, and a remarkable family into focus. The period was the forties and fifties, when the children of immigrants were striving to become American in a booming postwar world. The place was one block in Bayonne, New Jersey, and the house was a home that Roberts's grandfather built with his own hands. This compelling story captures a sense of change and continuity, of breaking new ground using the tools and traditions of America's honored past.