Dog People

Taught to divide the world into ""strong and independent"" cat people and ""weak and needy"" dog people, the 12-year-old narrator of this very dark coming-of-age story grows up, during the late 1960s, in a violent family in Salem, Mass., where their roots go deep. Trisha, her parents and her sisters, Cat and Franny, live in a house said to be haunted by their ancestress, one of the witches condemned in 1692 by the infamous Judge Hathorne. After Trisha's grandmother dies, the pressure of keeping up the great gabled house begins to take a ghastly toll on Trisha's parents. Fueled by compulsive drinking and obsessive gambling, the shouting matches between her parents escalate into beatings, and no one in the family is safe. As the family's woes escalate and the scenes of violence become more graphic, a classic picture emerges of the abusive alcoholic, the enabler spouse and the coping children. Even at its most gothic, McInerney-Whiteford's second novel (after Burning Down the House) proceeds with a tragic inevitability that pulls at the heartstrings. (June)