Description: A dramatic departure for the prize-winning author of Indigo--an exquisitely written, multifaceted wartime saga of identity, connection, and emotional endurance centering on an unforgettable English family. With his new novel, Graham Joyce directs his immense storytelling gifts in an altogether new direction and achieves the most ambitious and psychologically captivating work of his career. Set in Coventry, England--the notorious target of Hitler's fiercest bombing raid--during and after the Second World War, The Facts of Life follows the fortunes of one Frank Arthur Vine, the result of a tryst in a field between his mother Cassie and an American GI. Once it is determined that Cassie is too unreliable and unstable to act as his proper guardian, Frank is brought up alternately by his mother's six very different sisters--each of whom possesses her own singular idiosyncrasies--and by his beguiling and charismatic grandmother. But, as his mother knows, and his grandmother strongly suspects, Frank is no ordinary child. Peopled with entrancing characters, this is an enormously affecting tale of family and sisterhood, of the kindness and the madness of women, of the fantastic breaking through in a troubled world.

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