Line #12 Literature/FamilyTreeSeries


1	The Family Tree series is a four-book PeriodPiece GenerationalSaga series written by Creator/AnnMMartin.
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3	The series chronicles the lives of four girls, their mothers, and their daughters in four generations of a family--based in the fictional seaside town of Lewisport, Maine--as they each [[ComingofAge come of age]] in their time period. The books start with the main narrator as a child of about seven, and follows them and the family around them to nearly their adult life and the start of the next generation; the next book then follows [[SpinOffSpring their oldest daughter]]. Each character carries various secrets that, for one reason or another, they don't tell their own mothers--or later, daughters.
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5	The four books in the series are:
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7	# ''Better to Wish'': Abigail "Abby" Nichols is living in TheThirties and the early years of TheForties, dealing with her overbearing racist social climbing father, changing family dynamics and finances, loss, and secret friendships.
8	# ''The Long Way Home'': Dana Burley, Abby's oldest daughter, is growing up in TheFifties and TheSixties and is much closer to her dreamy father than her more practical mother. When tragedy strikes the family, Dana takes it poorly for years.
9	# ''Best Kept Secret'': Frances "Francie" Goldberg, Dana's only child, is growing up in the late TheSeventies and TheEighties. When a predator shakes up her world, Francie carries the guilt herself as a deep secret.
10	# ''Home Is the Place'': Georgia "Georgie" Noble, Francie's daughter and middle child, is growing up in TheNewTens and frustrated with her mother's unexplained strictness and the many issues in her family. It's during her story that Francie, Dana, and Abby each come to face the various family issues issues and secrets that have plagued each of them for decades.
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13	!!This series provides examples of the following tropes:
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15	* AbusiveParents: Luther Nichols is not a good father or patriarch. He controls his daughters' activities and constantly makes decisions for them without their input, insisting he knows what's best for them. He considers anything he doesn't know directly to be lying to him, and shuts down any questions Abby asks. He forbids her to play with children he doesn't approve of because of his racism, which includes Irish and Catholics. He gets angry when his disabled son Fred is incapable of eating with the rest of the family at fourteen months old, trying to force him to be at the table even though he can't sit up and trying to cram the food in his mouth. When forcing it doesn't work he takes his poor mood about it out not only on the family but on the help. He eventually sends Fred away to a "school" (really an institution) because the boy's disability embarrasses him as a person who's [[RagsToRiches "made it" socially]], and said he did what was right for Fred even though [[CallingTheOldManOut Abby says he did it because it was easy.]] He got only one son with Nell that lived past infancy--the previous one was stillborn--and was ashamed of him because he wasn't perfect, enough to all but abandon him.[[note]]He later has Miles with his second wife Helen, but Abby, Rose, and Adele are all [[HalfSiblingAngst estranged from him]], and their children (and later grandchildren) don't get to know him, his family, or Helen well; it's implied he either carries his father's prejudices or was doted on so much they avoided him.[[/note]] He tells Abby, when Zander asks to marry her when she's barely out of high school, that she ''has'' to and there won't be any argument otherwise (in part because [[VicariousGoldDigger Zander's family is rich]] and Luther's social standing matters more to him than anything Abby wants).[[note]]Abby does not marry Zander at first despite what her father tells her to do, turning Zander down and leaving to live independently in New York City. She and Zander don't marry until five years later.[[/note]] [[spoiler:And Nell's diary reveals to Georgie that Luther was upset he and Nell had two girls first, as [[WantedASonInstead he wanted at least three boys.]]]]
16	* AesopCollateralDamage: Doubles with SpecialAesopVictim. [[spoiler:Georgie's beloved music teacher Mr. Elden dies in the two-car accident that broke her brother Richard's leg--and killed his other two friends, including the DrunkDriver Seth.]]
17	* AgeGapRomance: The school nurse Helen marries Abby's father Luther (who is old enough to have a teenaged daughter) when she's 23--only six years older than Abby herself. Abby's younger sister Rose points out, after the wedding, that Helen's father looks almost exactly the same age as their father.
18	* TheAlcoholic: Abby's husband Zander. He drinks heavily to the point Abby is clearly upset with it and tells him not to do so in front of the children--which he does anyways, and often where Dana notices (though as a DaddysGirl she takes his side over her mother's). It ends up resulting in [[spoiler:his death when Dana is ten when he drunkenly chases his flyaway hat over the railing of a moving ferry and falls into the water, drowning in the process and widowing Abby.]]
19	* AlcoholInducedIdiocy:
20	** Zander stumbles about, giggles, and acts a general fool when he's been drinking. Abby pleads with him to at least not drink in front of the children, but he calls her a nag for it. This includes chasing his hat when it blows off his head while he's on a ferry. [[spoiler:He falls overboard and drowns in the river because of this.]]
21	** Richard, who's been drinking himself, gets in the car with his DrunkDriver friend Seth behind the wheel. [[spoiler:He's the only survivor of the two-car accident that kills Seth, his other friend, and Georgie's music teacher Mr. Elden who was in the car they hit.]]
22	* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: After Abby's best friend Sarah [[spoiler:drowns in a icy pond]], Abby is this in her first year of high school; she no longer has either Sarah or Orrin as Orrin's family has since moved away. The other kids talk about the issues in her family around her, and she feels like she's been labeled as "the girl whose best friend [[spoiler:drowned]]."
23	* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed in detail]] with Dana and Julia, Abby's oldest children, who are identical twins. Dana spends most of their childhood always trying to avoid being seen as just part of a twin set and never wanting to be "samesies." She's frustrated by Julia "copying" her even as young as seven; Julia seems to always get something that Dana picks out first, picks up her interests after her, and even wants to keep wearing matching clothes after Dana is annoyed by it. For their seventh birthday, Dana asks for her own separate room, and she even makes sure to change her dress for their party so they don't match. Dana tries to find friends and hobbies that are separate from Julia and doesn't start feeling independent and her own person until she moves away, which Julia takes badly. It takes Julia's [[spoiler:meningitis infection]] when they're in college for Dana to finally be less distant and connect with her sister.
24	* AmicablyDivorced: Dana and Matthew divorce when Francie is twelve, before they fully resent each other. They manage to get along--Dana is even happy for Matthew when he remarries--but Francie is unhappy about it for years.
25	* BigApplesauce: Nearly every character spends some time here.
26	** Abby moves to New York City to get away from her overbearing father and WickedStepmother Helen; her younger sister Adele follows her later and lives there from then on. Abby and Zander initially live here with their children, but after [[spoiler: Zander's death]] she moves back with her children to Maine and then around the state for some time.
27	** Dana moves in with her aunt Adele when she's fourteen in order to return to New York City; she's unhappy in Maine after her family's multiple moves [[spoiler:and missing her late father, Zander, who died there; she not only blames herself, but her mother initially.]]
28	** Georgie's family lives just outside of the city in Princeton, but after 9/11 happens, Francie insists on moving the family to Maine (where her family's roots are), abandoning her childhood home out of fear.
29	* BigFancyHouse: Luther moves his family to one in the early 1930s after making enough money to move them from Lewisport to Barnegat Point--it has two bathrooms, a parlor, and enough rooms that everyone including the new baby can have their own room. Abby doesn't feel comfortable there, especially after [[spoiler:her little brother Fred is sent away and her mother Nell dies]]. By the time Abby is an adult and has Dana, Julia, and Peter, only Helen and Luther live there with their servants. The house remains as a sign of Abby's estrangement from her father and his money until Georgie's book, when [[spoiler:after Helen's death]] it goes up for sale with most of the contents auctioned off. Abby takes nothing in memory and neither does her great granddaughter Georgie, but does one last walk through on her own.
30	* BreakingTheCycleOfBadParenting:
31	** Abby does this in the very next generation, despite all her faults between her and her daughter Dana. When her son Peter is born with Down Syndrome, she doesn't send him away like her father did with her disabled younger brother Fred. Even after [[spoiler:Zander dies]], she raises Peter herself, makes sure he has every accommodation she can get for him, and ensures he is always connected to his family, including his sisters, nieces, and nephews. When she's no longer able to care for him, she arranges for him to move in with his older sister Dana and Francie. Peter and his niece Francie [[CoolUncle have a loving bond]] because of this.
32	** Dana finally does this when her granddaughter Georgie shows up at her house after sneaking away from her overbearing mother Francie; Dana is so distressed after a day of back and forth calls with Georgie's parents that she's forced to face her own issues. She says she doesn't want Georgie to have the bad relationship with her mom that Dana has with her mother Abby, then calls her mother ''and'' her daughter Francie and says they all need to sit down and have a great big talk about everything, because it's clear that not talking about their problems and the various estrangements [[PoorCommunicationKills have only caused more issues between every generation of mother and daughter]]. She insists that all four generations meet at the family beachfront cottage and, once there, insists that everyone talk about their many issues that have been bottled up for years. She even says her mother Abby was right to be upset that Dana became distant to her, and can say [[IToldYouSo she told her so.]]
33	* CallingTheOldManOut:
34	** Abby--and Rose with her--calls her father Luther out when he takes her disabled younger brother, Fred, to an institution far from home without telling anyone where he's been sent to or that he's going to do it beforehand--not even their mother Nell. When Luther says he did what he thought was right, Abby says he did what he thought was ''easiest''.
35	** Abby gets called out by her daughter Dana for being drunk on the ferry and so not being there to stop her husband Zander [[spoiler:from falling overboard and subsequently drowning. However, Abby wasn't drunk. She was newly pregnant and having awful morning sickness.]]
36	** Francie gets it from Georgia for her overbearing mothering--with Georgie not knowing her mother has been paranoid ever since almost being kidnapped as a child.
37	* ChildhoodFriendRomance:
38	** Orrin Umhay with Abby, who Abby falls in love with in second grade. Granted, it's Abby's second marriage [[spoiler:after her first husband and Dana's father Zander dies]], but the two of them stay HappilyMarried until his own passing sometime after Georgie's high school graduation.
39	** Abby's mother Eleanor Durbin (later Nichols) intended to marry her childhood sweetheart Ralph Saunders, who she'd known since they were in third grade. He proposed right before he left to fight in the Great War--and didn't come back. [[spoiler:Or so she was told. He'd been disfigured and suffered a brain injury and when he recovered enough to let anyone know, he'd told his parents not to tell Nell out of shame for his disfigurement. Over a decade later he contacted her again, and they conducted a secret affair for several years.]]
40	* CoolUncle:
41	** Adele, the baby of the three Nichols girls, never marries and lives alone in an eccentric apartment in New York City after following Abby out there. She is this not only to Abby's daughter Dana--letting her move in with her when she insists on returning to New York City at fourteen--but to her grandniece Francie as well. [[spoiler:The whole family is devastated when she dies of breast cancer in the 80s.]]
42	** Peter is this for Dana's daughter Francie, especially after he moves in with her and her mother/his older sister Dana. She doesn't care he has Down Syndrome and she's always close to him. [[spoiler:When he dies when she's in college, Francie is gifted his favorite cowboy hat during his last words.]]
43	* CoversAlwaysLie: A minor one, but Georgie Noble--who is a quarter Black (through her paternal grandmother Denise) and a quarter Jewish (through her maternal grandfather Matthew)--appears WASP levels of white on the cover. While she does in fact have dark blonde hair, it's very thick and curly due to her being partially black and Jewish (it's described as so thick a comb won't easily go through it), but the cover makes it look straight and fine.
44	* CowardiceCallout:
45	** Dana calls out a rude lady who makes nasty, bigoted comments about her brother Peter, who has Down Syndrome and is sick one day on the swings. She walks up to the woman and says Peter can't help what happened and she thought adults weren't supposed to be rude, especially to children--but she guesses no one ''taught'' the woman that.
46	** Francie calls out a bigoted old couple who shake their head in disgust at Mr. and Mrs. Noble--Rich is white and Denise is black, making their kids George and Kaycee biracial. She glares at them, says--despite Dana trying to silence her--that they should get mad at her parents too because her father's Jewish and her mother's Presbyterian, then says they'd better be exactly the same--but they're ''not'', because the man has grey hair [[ElderlyBlueHairedLady and the woman has blue hair]]. The couple storms off, and then Mr. Noble laughs and praises her.
47	* DaddysGirl: Dana prefers her father Zander over her mother Abby and takes his side even when he's clearly wrong, such as his [[TheAlcoholic severe drinking problem]]. This becomes even more prominent when he publishes a book that she illustrates for him. Which means she's devastated when [[spoiler:he dies when she's ten years old, especially because he fell overboard and off the ferry in front of her]]. Years later, she claims her mother "nagged" him about his drinking, even though he was the one out of control. It's not until she's an adult with children--and grandchildren--of her own that she finally confesses that the real reason she wanted to go back to New York City was because she wanted her father back. [[ItsAllMyFault She also felt guilt]] for being there and seeing him [[spoiler:fall overboard into the water]], even though she was a child and couldn't have done anything.
48	* DarkSecret: Each generation carries one, often coupled with ItsAllMyFault; their lack of communicating their issues to their daughters results in lots of poor communication, resentment, upset, and paranoia.
49	** Luther feels this way about his disabled son Fred. He sends him away to an institution when he's five, and doesn't tell anyone else where he is for decades.
50	** Francie feels guilty for never telling anyone about the time a man in a black station wagon tried to kidnap her; after after another girl is kidnapped and assumed murdered, she carries the guilt for years. Hence the title of her narrated book, ''Best Kept Secret.''
51	** One of the largest is regarding Abby's mother, Eleanor. [[spoiler:She was DrivenToSuicide after her husband Luther sent their only son Fred away to a group home because he was disabled. She never mentally recovered and had already struggled with mental health for years, but losing Fred without any notice and not being taken to see him broke her. Abby doesn't know until she's an old lady, as she was only told her mother died in her sleep.]]
52	* DeadGuyJunior: Dana's youngest sister Nell [[spoiler:born after her father dies]] is named after Abby's late mother Eleanor. And while Georgie is not named directly after her, her middle name is Eleanor.
53	* DeathByNewberyMedal: Every character experiences at least one hard-hitting death before they're an adult that affects them emotionally as they grow up:
54	** Abby not only loses [[spoiler:her mother Nell ([[DrivenToSuicide to suicide]], a fact she doesn't learn until much later)]], but [[spoiler:her best friend Sarah Moreside, who drowns just before Christmas when they're early teens.]]
55	** Dana [[spoiler:sees her father Zander fall overboard while drunk and he drowns]]. She blames her mother for what happened even though there was nothing any of them could have done about it, including Dana.
56	** While Francie doesn't see it directly, the presumed death of a girl who is kidnapped by the same man who tried to kidnap her makes her grow up paranoid, because she thinks [[ItsAllMyFault if she had said something the girl wouldn't have been kidnapped.]]
57	** Georgie [[spoiler:loses her beloved music teacher Mr. Elden when her brother's friend collides with him in a drunk driving accident; her older brother Richard is the only survivor of the accident.]] She also learns that her great-great-grandmother, Nell [[spoiler:lost her first love in World War I--or ''thought'' she did. She did lose two babies early in life ''and'' was separated from her only living son Fred because her controlling husband Luther sent him to an institution.]]
58	* DeathOfAChild:
59	** Abby's mother Nell loses two babies early in their lives as [[TragicStillbirth stillbirths]] after Abby and Rose: Millicent and Luther, Jr. Her husband Luther planted a rosebush for each of them--but more to make his wife get over things and get on with life and back to keeping house than to actually help her heal. [[spoiler:And even he didn't suggest it; Nell asked for them to remember her babies and he begrudgingly allowed it.]]
60	** [[spoiler:Abby's best friend Sarah dies after sliding across thin ice and falling into a frozen pond in the winter of 1935 when they're teenagers, right before Christmas. Abby ends up miserable after her loss.]]
61	** A young girl, Erin Mulligan, is kidnapped and never found, [[spoiler:assumed to have been murdered]]. Francie, who never told anyone about her encounter with a man trying to kidnap her, [[ItsAllMyFault feels immense guilt]] to the point she ends up paranoid about it and overprotective of her daughter Georgie.
62	** The DrunkDriver car accident that kills [[spoiler:Georgie's music teacher Mr. Elden also kills all of Richard's other friends, including the driver Seth; he's the only survivor]].
63	** The epilogue of the fourth book reveals that [[spoiler:Georgie's older brother Richard and his wife lost a baby born a year ago.]]
64	* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest:
65	** [[spoiler:Abby's mother dies Nell when she's a teenager, which leaves her only with her sexist, social climbing father Luther and later WickedStepmother Helen. Abby constantly thinks better of her mother than her father, and she never got to know much about her mother's struggles with mental health until many decades later when her great-granddaughter Georgie finds Nell's SecretDiary; even then, she's still much more enamored with her mother, in part because of everything Luther is.]]
66	** [[spoiler:Dana, a DaddysGirl to the point of being blind to her father Zander's [[TheAlcoholic drinking problem]] and many faults, elevates him even more after he passes and is annoyed and is resentful of her mother constantly moving them around Maine to keep a job to support herself without any help from Luther (even though again, it was Zander's [[MrsRedInk spendthrift ways]] that left them with debt after his drowning that Abby worked to pay off while raising four kids). This culminates in her moving away and in with her aunt when she's a teenager, leaving the rest of the family behind and having a poor relationship with Abby until she's a grandmother.]]
67	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Abby's father Luther is realistically racist, bigoted, and misogynist for a white conservative man in the 1930s. He thinks the town starts going downhill when the "wrong kind" of people move in. The phrase "Maine should stay white" comes out of his mouth to Abby--and by white he means [[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant American and Protestant]], certainly not ''Catholic''. He thinks there are better families for Abby to associate with, not Irish Orrin or French Canadian Marie. When his daughter Abby marries Orrin [[spoiler:(her second marriage)]], he is furious--because the boy's half Irish Catholic through his mother--and refuses to attend the wedding, and also despises Dana's husband for being Jewish. And any time he doesn't want to deal with something, he shuts it down and pushes it away; too many questions from Abby annoys him. He never grows out of this, and his prejudices extend to black people, Asian people, Jewish people, and anyone he considers "foreign."
68	* DisappearedDad: Zander for Dana [[spoiler:after he dies by drowning]]. Part of Dana's drive to move back to New York is to feel close to him again, especially given how much she continues to elevate him and resent her mother Abby.
69	* DistantFinale: The series was published between 2013 and 2015, with the last event of the last book before the finale being Georgie's high school graduation in 2013. The epilogue of the last book (and framing prologue of the first book) are set in 2022 with Abby reminiscing about her life on her 100th birthday. The epilogue informs the readers that [[spoiler:Richard is married with a child--though he lost one child young--and Georgie is married and pregnant with her first child. Abby also mentions in passing the deaths of her second husband Orrin, younger sister Rose, and younger brother Fred, which occurred sometime between 2013 and 2022.]]
70	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Adele, the baby of Abby's siblings[[note]]not including her [[HalfSiblingAngst half-brother Miles]][[/note]], as a child often referred to "fairies" as something she believed in (saying they took Fred and her mother Nell away). She [[ConfirmedBachelor never wants to marry]] and eventually leaves for New York and gets a job as a costume designer for films and Broadway. Her apartment is eccentrically designed and she never lives with anyone else other than her niece Dana, and spends lots of time among various friends her father wouldn't approve of. [[spoiler:She later dies of breast cancer in the 1980s, and two different services are held--one in New York and a more conservative one in Maine, and at the New York one her employer Bobbie Palombo (whom she knew from the time she arrived) is treated like family by Dana.]] The parallels to being a queer woman who stayed in the closet are present.
71	* DomesticAbuse: Luther counts. While he never physically hits Eleanor, he's emotionally cold and controlling. He made Nell stop seeing her old friends after their marriage, saying he didn't like her friend Faye (and it's never stated why) and forbidding them from meeting after they start courting. He makes her quit her job as a milliner after they marry, because he doesn't want people to think he's incapable of supporting a family on his own. His planting the rosebushes (as representative of each child Nell lost) was more for her to get back to doing housework again instead of sulking about [[spoiler:and it was her who begged for them to remember them; he didn't want the rosebushes]]. The worst thing he does, however, is placing their only son Fred (who is mentally and physically disabled) in a group home out of embarrassment and without consulting her. Many of his views don't change, and Abby has to demand to know where her little brother is to find him again.
72	* DoesntTrustThoseGuys: Luther is bigoted towards anyone that doesn't fit his narrow-minded [[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant WASP]], Hoover and conservative Republican view. This includes Irish people, French people, and Catholics. When he becomes [[RagsToRiches well off]], he forbids Abby from spending time with lower class people, especially Orrin.
73	* DrivenToSuicide: Revealed in the fourth book: [[spoiler: Abby's mother Eleanor, who kept multiple diaries that her great-great-grandaughter Georgie discovers and reads through long after her death. She had struggled with mental illness and was already fragile after losing several babies early in their lives, but when the controlling nature of her husband Luther leads to her only living son, Fred, being sent away to an institution when he's five, Nell never emotionally recovers. Her last diary entry says she can't do "it" anymore, and it's with horror that Georgie realizes that "it" means ''remain alive''.]]
74	* DrunkDriver: Francie's son and Georgie's elder brother Richard ends up in a car accident due to his friend Seth's drunk driving. (Richard had been drinking as well.) The accident fractures his thigh and puts him in physical therapy, but he comes off best out in the crash. [[spoiler:He's the only survivor of the two-car accident. Seth--who'd been driving--the other unnamed friend, and the person in the other car are all killed, and the single driver in the other car is Georgie's music teacher, Mr. Elden.]]
75	* FantasyForbiddingFather: Abby's father Luther doesn't want Abby and Rose to socialize with "certain children" or work for themselves, and when Halloween becomes popular says they can't attend a party because it's "witches and black magic" and not Christian enough. He also tells them they can't work for money, especially in stores. Abby eventually leaves to live her own life, followed later by Adele.
76	* FirstGuyWins:
77	** While Abby initially marries Zander, she later marries her childhood friend Orrin [[spoiler:after Zander dies]].
78	** Francie ends up marrying George, one of the first boys she ever became friends with.
79	** [[spoiler:Nell, Abby's mother, never fell out of love with her first love Ralph Saunders; when they reunite, she carries on a secret affair with him for years and even introduces him to Abby and Rose when they're young.]]
80	* FullNameBasis: Mostly invoked in the narrative; the characters have their full names mentioned frequently in book four to state who's narrating each chapter, in part to show their changes through their lives including marriages, [[spoiler:divorce, widowhood, and remarriage]].
81	* FullNameUltimatum: Often done when the girl or woman in focus is in trouble or being rude--including when Abby is talking to Zander about his drinking problem, even though he's the one in the wrong.
82	* GenerationalTrauma: Each of the girls end up with some form of it, and their [[PoorCommunicationKills inability to communicate clearly about their emotions]] passes their pain down from their generation to the next. It's when Georgie shows up at her Nana Dana's house, having run away because of Francie's overbearing and not allowing her to ever do anything out of fear when Dana, tired of it all, says that everyone needs to get together and heal finally--and they do.
83	* HalfSiblingAngst: Abby (and her sisters and brother) have a younger half-brother, Miles, through their stepmother Helen. He is almost never mentioned by any of the central family and the one time he's actually seen in the series, it's at [[spoiler:Luther's funeral, supporting Helen]]. It's implied he may share the same bigotries as their father and this is why Abby and her sisters don't get along with him--but it also may be because Luther doted on him most as the only "good" son he ever had.
84	* HatedByAll: None of Luther's daughters like him or his second wife Helen; Abby says they never got along. None of the subsequent generations care for him and their visits to his BigFancyHouse are obligations to Dana and Francie as children. [[spoiler:When he dies in ''Best Kept Secret'', Francie attends mostly out of respect, as he never approved of her being half Jewish, and notices the only person standing near Helen during the funeral and after funeral gathering is her son Miles.]]
85	* HelicopterParents: Francie. Due to her own [[ImproperlyParanoid paranoia]] never being addressed, she hovers over her children severely. She forbids Georgie from building a snowman in the front yard, and when Georgie asks to walk next door, she's told she has to call and then be walked over by her mom. Francie doesn't initially trust her baby-sitter to baby-sit. After 9/11, Francie even leaves a New Year's Party early because she needs to be by the kids. Her [[MyBelovedSmother smothering]] and denial of anything--including overriding her husband's input if she doesn't think it's "safe"--annoys Georgie and only comes to a head when Georgie's 16.
86	* HollywoodHistory: Not terribly, but each book has at least one or two major historical events happening around the characters, with several getting focus chapters.
87	** Abby lives through TheGreatDepression and is an adult during the start of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. She mentions the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby, later found dead, as a reason her mother doesn't want her and Rose to walk two blocks into town alone after they move to a nicer house.
88	** Dana is seven during the Montgomery Bus boycott and a teenager living with her aunt Adele in New York City when [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy President Kennedy]] is assassinated.
89	** Georgie is in first grade when [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] happens; it's her fifth day of first grade. Her best friend Leslie's father works in the Twin Towers, and her father works in New York City while her grandmother and aunt and uncle live there. George comes home safe and the rest of the family is okay, but [[spoiler:Leslie's father dies, and her mother ends up moving their family to Colorado.]] Paranoid Francie uproots the whole family to Maine in the wake, making her husband George have to quit his good teaching job in the process.
90	* ImproperlyParanoid: Francie thinks she's justified in her overprotectiveness and only wants to keep her family and children safe due to nearly being kidnapped as a child (and never telling anyone, which makes her think another girl being kidnapped and then never found [[ItsAllMyFault happened because she never spoke up]]). However, she refuses to let her children walk even as far as next door alone or play in the front yard without watching them. She panicked at having a baby sitter and used a nanny cam the first four times. After 9/11 she not only leaves a New Year's Party early because she can't spend one night away from her children, but then insists--without considering her husband's input--that she and her family must uproot their entire lives and move to Maine because it's "safer" than Princeton and because she can't live there anymore, they all have to leave. While her children get some small freedoms in Maine, she still keeps them on tight leashes (for example, won't let them bike to the nearby town with friends). She grounds her daughter Georgie for a week for taking her little brother Henry with her to a guitar lesson because--while Georgie told Richard they were going together--they didn't tell ''Francie'', so Francie panicked and nearly called the police even though Henry was with his sister the whole time. And almost anything her children ask to do she shoots down, even before her husband can have input, and often overrides him. This [[MyBelovedSmother smothering, overparanoid parenting style]] only breaks when Georgie, forbidden to perform with a band because it's an overnight trip with seniors and she's just sixteen, runs away to her grandmother's house--and Dana sees her going down the same path with Francie she went down with Abby and [[BreakingTheCycleOfBadParenting makes all four generations sit down and talk their problems out.]]
91	* InTheBlood: When it comes to creative arts. The family has generations of writers, musicians, creatives, and artists. Abby writes poems, her [[spoiler:first, late]] husband Zander is a writer, their daughter Dana is a children's book writer and artist (she illustrates a book for her father as a child and one of her most popular books is based on her brother Peter), Francie is a novelist, and his great-granddaughter Georgie plays guitar and is invested in music. This is even invoked when Francie reads a story at a summer family party when she's about nine. Aunt Rose--Abby's sister--says that she inherited Zander's talent and they have another writer in the family. [[spoiler:Georgie later reads in Nell's diaries that she was an artist, like her granddaughter Dana.]]
92	* ItsAllMyFault:
93	** Dana feels immense guilt for [[spoiler:her father Zander's death, believing she could have pulled him back from jumping over the ferry railing and drowning]] even though she was a child at the time. Her guilt, blame towards her mother, and pining for her father--as well as her anger--leads her to leave her mother and family and move back to New York City to live with her aunt Adele.
94	** Francie never told anyone about her frightening encounter with a man in a black station wagon that tried to kidnap her. When another girl, Erin Mulligan, is kidnapped by the same man and never found, she feels guilty because she thinks if she had spoken up sooner, Erin would have been safe. She carries the guilt for years, with it manifesting in her overprotectiveness of her children and paranoia whenever she doesn't feel "safe".
95	* LIsForDyslexia: Francie struggles with this starting from childhood; she describes it as letters flipping around and upside down.
96	* LateArrivalSpoiler: Given that every book follows the very next generation, spoilers about the husbands of each girl and the fathers of the next generation are a given: Abby marries Zander [[spoiler:then Orrin after Zander dies]], Dana marries Matthew, and Francie marries George. The fourth book also spoils many major events, deaths, and/or the character's feelings on them that have happened throughout.
97	* LongLostRelative: Fred for Abby, Rose, and Adele. Their father Luther sent him to a institution when he was only five because he was ashamed of his then only living son being disabled, and didn't tell anyone where he was even as he paid for Fred's care. Abby asks her father about him in 1980 after he comes up during Thanksgiving, and they reunite with him when he's forty-nine--forty-four years later. Adele's not even sure he remembers them, but the first thing he says is to call Abby his big sister--and as they leave, he tells his assistant Tim that that's his family.
98	* MaidenAunt: Adele never gets married or has children, though she serves as the CoolAunt to Abby's daughter Dana and later, grandniece, Francie.
99	* MalignedMixedMarriage:
100	** Abby marries her childhood friend and part-Irish Catholic Orrin [[spoiler:as her second marriage]] and later Dana marries Jewish Matthew Goldberg. Luther is not pleased with either marriage and actually refuses to attend Abby's wedding to Orrin because of it.
101	** The third book has friends of the Goldbergs, the Nobles, facing prejudice due to being a black and white couple with mixed-race children. When Francie realizes what's happening, the bigoted strangers earn a scathing comeback from her.
102	* MorningSickness: Abby is off being sick on the ferry back home when [[spoiler:her husband Zander falls overboard and drowns]]. Dana didn't realize why her mother was sick and initially blamed Abby for not being there when it happened, thinking she had been (hypocritically) drunk too--and not realizing her mother was pregnant until later when she learns about the next baby on the way. Abby spends the whole pregnancy sick with morning, afternoon, ''and'' evening sickness, not helped by her having to face that Zander's [[MsRedInk spendthrift ways]] have left a lot of debts behind for her to clear up.
103	* MsRedInk: [[spoiler:After Zander's death]], Abby learns Zander spent his writing money as fast as he earned it, including on their very lavish New York City lifestyle. He also sent large checks to pay part of his parents' house costs in Maine, since [[RichesToRags their business had failed and they could only afford their new smaller house with Zander's assistance]]. She spends years clearing up Zander's many debts--when her father Luther told her the reason she had to marry Zander was because [[{{Irony}} she'd never have to worry about money again]] if she married him.
104	* MyBelovedSmother: Francie has became this by the time she has children, due to her paranoia from almost being kidnapped as a child. She doesn't let Georgie even walk next door to her friend's house and watch from the front steps, monitors the babysitter the first four times to make sure she's following the rules and not allowing strange men over, and often undercuts her husband George when it comes to the kids and their life just to feel safe. Her paranoia and overprotective parenting are so bad that she demands the family move to Maine after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks because it's "safer" and not so close to NYC. Georgie thinks she's not allowed to do anything because of her controlling mom and this culminates in sixteen year old Georgie sneaking out and running away to her Nana Dana's house without telling anyone she's gone after her mother forbids her from playing in a band with older girls because it's an overnight trip.
105	* NewJobAsThePlotDemands: Deconstructed. When Francie makes the whole family move to Maine because she's terrified of living near New York City and needs to feel "safe," her husband George has to quit his stable job as a teacher and it's hard for him to find a new job, especially as a half-black man in Maine. He tries to open a dollhouse store, followed by a less successful juice bar. After the juice bar fails, George leaves home and is gone for weeks staying with his sister, fracturing the family. He comes back and starts to work as a real estate agent--but struggles, leaves again, and returns two weeks later. He limps along as a real estate agent until the DistantFinale, where he and Francie have moved back to Princeton (and while not stated, it's implied he was able to find a new teaching job).
106	* NewYorkIsOnlyManhattan: The series only focuses on Manhattan for its New York locale, when it's not happening up in Maine. Abby moves there when she grows up followed by her sister Adele who lives there her whole life. Abby initially raises her children there [[spoiler:until Zander's death]], and her daughter Dana moves there when she's a teen [[spoiler:to be close to her father again]]. Francie averts this slightly by living in Princeton, NJ, but it's right across the water from Manhattan and when 9/11 happens, Georgie's best friend Leslie [[spoiler:loses her father because he worked in the World Trade Center]].
107	* NouveauRiche: Luther is this after he makes enough money to move his family to Barnegat Point. He complains when Nell says the girls should still do chores after they've moved, saying that Stuart Burley--a well off man living next door--doesn't make his children do chores and hires help. He throws a big fancy party for Abby for her eleventh birthday with a spread of food that includes lobster, cold roast beef, and three salads. Then he makes a big show of presenting her with a silver wristwatch--something she didn't ask for.
108	* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
109	** Every one of the girls except Dana go by a nickname: Abby for Abigail, Francie for Frances, and Georgie for Georgia.
110	** Kaycee, George's younger sister and Francie's friend [[spoiler:and later sister-in-law]], goes by this; her initials are Katherine Christine, but everyone calls her Kaycee.
111	* OutlivingOnesOffspring:
112	** Abby's mother Nell lost two children as infants in [[TragicStillbirth stillbirths]].
113	** [[spoiler:The Moresides lose their only daughter Sarah--Abby's best friend--after she drowns in an icy pond in December 1935. They end up moving away two years later.]]
114	** Luther outlives his youngest daughter Adele [[spoiler:who dies of breast cancer]] by two years.
115	** Abby (who lives to 100) outlives her only son Peter [[spoiler:who dies of pneumonia when Francie is in her junior year of college in the 1990s]].
116	* ParentPreferredSuitor: Luther wants Abby to marry Zander Burley, the son of a rich business man in the upper part of town, because the Burleys are socially prominent and well off. Abby turns Zander down and goes to live on her own. [[spoiler:He loosely gets his way--Abby marries Zander five years later--but Zander dies after about a decade of marriage and widows Abby with four kids to raise and many debts to pay off.]]
117	* PeriodPiece: Each book encapsulates its era for the girl and later young lady living through it.
118	* PoorCommunicationKills: Much of the strife in the family (especially from mother to daughter) can be attributed to this trope. The biggest ones are between Dana and Abby and Georgie and Francie. Dana didn't want to hurt her mother Abby by telling her the real reason she left for New York (with Abby seeing it as abandonment) was because Dana missed her father and felt [[spoiler:guilty for her father's death as he fell overboard in front of her]]). And Francie keeps the secret of almost being kidnapped to herself--and the guilt when her not telling anyone resulted in the kidnapping and murder of another child--for several decades and this makes her an [[MyBelovedSmother overprotective mom]] that doesn't let Georgie do anything, uproots her whole family to Maine without caring about her half-black husband's employment potential as a teacher (and wrecks the family finances when he can't keep a job) all so she can feel "safe" about her children--and in the process almost drives Georgia away. When sixteen-year-old Georgie runs away to her Nana Dana's after one too many denials to do ''anything'' without her mother either forbidding it or hovering over her, Dana has to face that she's been just as bad with not talking to her own mother and decides they all need to sit down and finally talk about their [[GenerationalTrauma family issues]] without keeping secrets. All four generations finally talk things out about their various burdens and secrets. [[spoiler:The fifth generation comes into play when Georgie, who has been reading her great-great-grandmother Nell's [[SecretDiary hidden diaries]], presents them to the family--and it's clear that Nell had the same issue with Abby including being unable to talk about her deteriorating mental health that lead her to [[DrivenToSuicide take her own life]], which Abby always thought was her dying in her sleep.]]
119	* RagsToRiches: Luther makes it as a carpenter and is able to move his family into better living from their beachfront house in Lewisport--and once he does, doesn't want his daughters to continue to associate with lower class people, and often wants to appear rich and socially acceptable among the upper classes to impress them.
120	* RichesToRags: Zander is the son of the prominent in town Burley family. The family is socially prominent and rich to the point Luther invokes their name as a family to look up to when they move next door to them. When Zander asks to marry Abby through her father, part of the reason Luther demands that Abby do so (along with his sexist attitude) is because Zander's family is rich, socially prominent and well off and it'll be a good merging of the families. [[spoiler:Abby turns Zander down the first time but accepts five years later after living on her own.]] It's around ten years of marriage later [[spoiler:after Zander dies]] that Abby finds out that--while her husband had made quite a lot of money as a writer--[[MsRedInk he'd spent it as fast as it came in]] ''and'' had been sending large checks to his parents in Maine since their business had failed and they could only afford their new smaller house with Zander's assistance, all while the Burleys were living a very lavish lifestyle in New York City. Abby pays off all Zander's many debts herself--without asking her financially well-off father for any help other than a place to live and a car for a short while--and works multiple odd and often humiliating jobs to support their four kids until she marries Orrin. [[{{Irony}} Ironically]], one of the reasons Luther told Abby she had to marry Zander was that [[VicariousGoldDigger she would never have to worry for money once they were wed]], but it's ''all'' she does after [[spoiler:Zander's death]] until she remarries.
121	* SecretDiary: [[spoiler:Georgie ends up finding her great-great grandmother Eleanor's hidden diaries in a panel in the house, making her the secret fifth generation of the stories from Georgie reading her words and later sharing Eleanor's secrets with her oldest, Abby.]]
122	* SecretKeeper: [[spoiler:Abby never told anyone about the day she, her sister, and her mother Nell spent with Nell's first love Ralph. She reminisces about it after her great-granddaughter Georgia tells her about her mother's hidden diaries.]]
123	* SecretRelationship: [[spoiler:Nell and Ralph carry one on for several years after he comes back, behind her husband Luther's back. There's an implication that Luther might have suspected at some point, but it's left a mystery.]]
124	* SpecialAesopVictim:
125	** Francie is almost kidnapped by a man in a black car, and never tells anyone what happens. A few months later a young girl, Erin Mulligan, is kidnapped and never found, [[spoiler:assumed to have been murdered]], and a man in a black car is mentioned to be involved.
126	** Doubles with AesopCollateralDamage--[[spoiler:Georgie's beloved music teacher Mr. Elden dies in the two-car accident that broke her brother Richard's leg--and killed his other two friends, including the Drunkdriver Seth.]]
127	* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: [[spoiler:Dana's youngest sister Nell is born after their father Zander dies.]]
128	* StayInTheKitchen: Luther's attitude towards women (especially WASP women of his class level) working and going to college is exceptionally backwards. He forbid his wife Nell from spending time with old friends after they start courting and makes her quit her job when they marry because he doesn't want anyone to think he can't support a family on his own by having his wife (and later, daughters) work. When a divorced woman, Miss Irene Maynard, takes over the old clothing store, one of the many reasons that Luther forbids his daughter Abby from working there--other than him not thinking it's a respectable job--is because she's divorced, and after graduation the only job Luther lets Abby get is as a librarian. It takes Abby--and later Adele--moving to New York City to become independent women, while Rose does so by marrying.
129	* SwitchingPOV: Each book after the first includes the perspective of the previous narrator or narrators, often revealing information her daughter doesn't know that would change her outlook. The last book includes perspectives from all four generations, including several times in the same scene. [[spoiler:There's also a secret fifth perspective: Abby's mother Eleanor, through her [[SecretDiary hidden diaries]] that her great-great granddaughter Georgie finds.]]
130	* TheTopicOfCancer: [[spoiler:Adele, Dana's beloved aunt and Abby's baby sister, is diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1980s and eventually dies of it.]]
131	* TragicStillbirth: Abby's mother Nell had two stillborn children after Abby and Rose: Millicent and Luther, Jr. Her husband Luther planted a rosebush for each of them on the property, but they were less to help her heal and more because he wanted his wife to get over things, get on with life, and get back to keeping house than to actually help her heal. [[spoiler:And even he didn't suggest it; Nell asked for them to remember her babies and he begrudgingly allowed it.]] She never truly recovers from the loss, and when Luther later takes their only surviving son Fred to an institute for being disabled, Nell's mental health shatters. [[spoiler:Leading later to her [[DrivenToSuicide taking her own life]].]]
132	* TheUnfavorite: Georgia feels this way with her mother Francie, due to her being [[MyBelovedSmother overly strict with her]] and not giving her the freedoms others her age have. She eventually gets so frustrated with the way Francie treats her and the way she's not allowed to do anything that she runs away to New York City where her grandmother Dana lives. Dana [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome takes her granddaughter back to Maine]]--and decides she, her daughter Francie, ''and'' her mother Abby all need to talk to each other about their problems rather than keeping so many secrets and resentments.
133	* UnwantedGiftPlot: Abby wants a lovely doll for her eleventh birthday. Her father Luther (who is now NouveauRiche) instead presents her with a fancy wristwatch at her lavish seaside picnic party, calling it a grown up gift for a grown up girl--but it's not what she wanted. Her mother Nell gets her the doll as a secret gift.
134	* VicariousGoldDigger: Abby is outright told by her social-climbing RagsToRiches father Luther that she has to marry Zander Burley, the son of a prominent family; one of the reasons Luther gives is that since the Burleys are rich, Abby will never have to worry about money again once they're married. [[spoiler:Abby turns Zander down, but marries him five years later after living on her own. When Zander dies--leaving her with three kids and [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy one on the way]]--widowed Abby learns that [[MsRedInk Zander spent his writing money as fast as he earned it]] and she has to clear his many debts. Which [[{{Irony}} leaves her to worry about finances for years afterwards.]]]]
135	* VomitIndiscretionShot: Peter has one when he's a child; he swings too much and throws up his recently-eaten ice cream mid-swing, which is vividly described. A rude woman says aloud that that's why "children like him" should stay at home instead of being in public, and Dana [[CowardiceCallout calls her out]] for her abelist bigotry.
136	* WhiteCollarWorker: Abby leaves home and goes to live in New York City [[spoiler:after she turns down Zander's proposal when she's but eighteen]]. She works for a temp agency in offices, but she's happy to be independent.

Context Literature / FamilyTreeSeries