Fulton tells the history of a family in Watervliet, NY, outside of Troy, through a series of stories about the women. I like it to a point but then I lost interest. This may have been more a function of my mood than of the book. The stories never engaged me. ( )

Fulton’s stories cover an entire century in the lives of the women of the Garrahan family of Troy, N.Y. Beginning in 1908 when hard-headed and practical farmwife Mamie Garrahan must face childbirth aided only by her flighty, arsenic-eating sister-in-law Kitty and a strange potion given her by an unconventional and self-destructive nun, the stories all test Mamie’s theory that there is no room for saints in the 20th century. Each of Mamie’s eventual descendents is a imperfect saint herself, from an anorexic sweet-shop waitress who makes it her mission to feed sugar and joy to her wealthy boyfriend to a registered nurse who strives to perform healing miracles but finds herself questioning her own abilities to a middle-aged Melville scholar who takes in stray cats and hard cases but just can’t get her own life on track. Each story ties into the others, with Kitty’s arsenic ending up in the hands of a descendent sixty years later and the registered nurse finding herself old and being cared for by her daughter instead of the other way around. Each story is a vibrant picture of a decade as seen through the lives of a series of beautifully flawed women trying their level best to make their way in the world and find happiness, love, and stability. ( )