Treetops: A Family Memoir

By Susan Cheever

Book Overview

In this compelling companion volume to her acclaimed memoir Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever once again gives readers a revealing look into her famous family, whose secrets and eccentricities parallel their genius and successes. Set against the backdrop of Treetops, the New Hampshire family retreat where the Cheevers still summer, and going back several generations, this powerful remembrance focuses on Susan Cheever's mother's family, and includes portraits of her great-grandfather, Thomas Watson, who invented the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell, and her grandfather Milton Winternitz, a brilliant doctor who built Yale Medical School. And of course there is her beloved and talented father John Cheever, the accomplished author who became one of the most well-known writers of the century, often using his family as material. Perhaps most riveting about Susan Cheever's second biographical masterpiece is its exploration of the lives of the Cheever women. At once a unique family portrait and the tale of every family, Treetops draws us effortlessly into a fascinating yet endearingly familiar world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671028510
• ISBN13: 9780671028510
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Quietly Moving Memoir tells of America's Changing Century

"Treetops," while telling of one family in particular, speaks to the ever changing family unit in the 20th century where the roles began firmly established in 1900 and careened on to a helter skelter order in 2000. The role of women, children, and siblings in a man's world is dissected in "Treetops" --all through the eyes of one family child as she looks at the past. I found the book quietly moving as I learned about the family and found it reflected in my own. "Treetops" is the place we all long to go back to and the place we all long to escape from at the same time.