Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
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Bill Clegg’s fiction debut is a novel of family extinguished, literally. Deep in the night a house burns to the ground and only June, who couldn’t sleep, escapes the conflagration. In the house are her daughter and fiancé, her lover, her ex-husband. All lost. For June, all that’s left is grief that’s unendurable. For Lydia, the mother of June’s lover, only emptiness. June gets in her car and drives. Lydia withdraws into an empty house. But without intentionally reaching out, both women make connections that draw them further out into the world and deeper into the past—while the reason for the fire ticks away in the reader’s mind. Bill Clegg has a raw talent for shining light on the workings of people’s hearts and heads, and his skillful weaving of their stories into a skein of family makes a sense that is at once harsh and kind of all their collective, connected pasts. – Betsy Burton