How the Light Gets In
By Joyce Maynard
William Morrow, 9780062398307. June 2025, 432 pp.

The Short of It:

Wow, wow, wow.

The Rest of It:

Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface. ~ Indiebound

How the Light Gets In is the follow-up to Maynard’s much loved Count the Ways. The family has grown, there are new losses to navigate. Eleanor is still Eleanor but still struggling with motherhood and marriage and what tragedy can do to a family.

In this story, it’s presented early on that Eleanor’s son Toby suffers a brain injury. Although Toby suffers in some ways, he thrives in others. He’s the most caring, loving individual and quite the qualified goat farmer. Eleanor is of course, very protective of him and that drives how she interacts with nearly everyone he meets.

This is a layered, family drama that spans the pandemic years and those very difficult election years so it is heavy in places. Maynard touches on sexual identity, infidelity, drug and alcohol use, the prevalence of school shootings, and political unrest. I feel that Maynard did her best to pack everything into this book, and by the time you turn that last page you will have been through it. It’s heavy and weighty.

There are some beautiful, quiet moments though. I think that is what most of us come to expect from Maynard and she does not disappoint.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.