Count the Ways

The novel opens at the wedding of Eleanor's firstborn child, Al, to his bride, Teresa, on a New Hampshire farm Eleanor once owned. Now in her mid-fifties, Eleanor holds her three-year-old granddaughter, Louise, whom she is meeting for the first time after three years of estrangement from her daughter Ursula. As the couple kisses, a bolt of lightning strikes the farm's ancient ash tree, Old Ashworthy, sending it crashing to the ground. The novel then moves backward through the family's history to trace how they arrived at this moment.

Eleanor's childhood is defined by emotional neglect. Her parents, Martin and Vivian, are absorbed in each other and in heavy drinking, leaving Eleanor largely invisible. When a car crash caused by drunk driving kills both of them during her junior year at boarding school, she is left with no family. The following summer, she stays with her roommate Patty Hallinan's family in Rhode Island, where Patty's older brother, Matt, a college student, repeatedly rapes 16-year-old Eleanor in his car. She becomes pregnant, and Matt arranges an illegal abortion. Eleanor tells no one for years.

After dropping out of college, Eleanor uses income from her successful children's book series about an orphan named Bodie to purchase a farmhouse at the end of a dead-end road in Akersville, New Hampshire. She lives alone for several years, befriending her neighbors Walt and Edith and a woman named Darla, who is trapped in an abusive marriage. A police officer shoots Eleanor's dog, Charlie, for chasing deer, deepening her isolation.

At a craft fair in Vermont, Eleanor meets Cam, a tall, red-haired woodworker who speaks of wanting babies the night they meet. He moves in 10 days later, and they marry that summer. Their first child, Alison, is born at home, followed by Ursula and then Toby, a Christmas Day baby whose red hair, webbed feet, deep voice, and mystical temperament set him apart from birth. Eleanor's Bodie books lose their publisher, and financial pressure mounts. Cam's handmade bowls bring in almost nothing, leaving Eleanor to carry the family's financial burden, a source of growing resentment she rarely voices.

Eleanor channels her experience of parenthood into an illustrated strip called Family Tree, featuring a fictional family modeled on her own. The strip is picked up by the local paper and eventually appears in nearly a hundred newspapers. The tensions in her marriage deepen: Cam is the fun, carefree parent while Eleanor handles the worry, the money, and the logistics. Young neighbor Coco becomes the children's beloved babysitter. At a Labor Day party, Timmy Pouliot, a young motorcycle-riding softball teammate of Cam's whom Eleanor first met when Timmy was 13, tells her he has always been in love with her.

On a scorching summer day, Cam falls asleep while watching the children. Toby, age four, wanders to the family pond with rocks in his pockets and nearly drowns. Ursula spots him facedown in the water and screams. Cam revives Toby with CPR, but the oxygen deprivation causes permanent brain damage. The old Toby, the violin-playing, rock-collecting whirlwind, is replaced by a quiet child who can barely speak. Eleanor blames Cam entirely and cannot forgive him. She ends her strip, unable to depict the tragedy honestly.

In January 1986, on the day the Challenger space shuttle explodes, devastating Ursula, who idolized astronaut Christa McAuliffe, Eleanor drives past the waterfall and spots Cam kissing Coco, now 18, in his truck. That night he tells Eleanor he is in love with Coco and wants a divorce. They tell the children together. Toby, who has been nearly emotionless since the accident, erupts in a primal howl: "I want my family" (242).

Eleanor moves to a condo in Brookline, Massachusetts, agreeing to let Cam stay on the farm with a nine-year deadline to buy out her half. Cam never tells the children about his affair with Coco, so they blame Eleanor for leaving. She keeps his secret to honor their promise never to speak ill of each other. Eleanor begins a secret relationship with Timmy, finding comfort in his tenderness and uncomplicated affection, but keeps him separate from the rest of her life.

Cam and Coco marry and have a son, Elijah. One by one, Eleanor's children choose to move back to the farm: first Toby, who wants to be near Elijah and his goats; then Al, after an argument with Eleanor; then Ursula. Eleanor signs over her rights to the farm without payment, sacrificing her most significant financial asset to prevent her children from resenting her for forcing its sale. She ends things with Timmy, believing he deserves a younger woman and children of his own.

Alone in Brookline, Eleanor creates a new children's book, The Cork People, inspired by the family's old springtime tradition of crafting miniature cork figures and launching them in the brook near the farm. The book becomes a bestseller and is adapted into an animated TV series, providing financial stability. She brings Toby to a clinic in Baltimore specializing in brain injury rehabilitation, where he makes real progress, eventually reciting a Carl Sandburg poem at the program's graduation. Eleanor's best friend, Darla, finally leaves her abusive husband, Bobby. Days later, Bobby shoots and kills Darla at a gas station before turning the gun on himself.

Al leaves for Stanford and later sends an email to the family announcing his gender transition, asking them to use male pronouns. Eleanor recognizes this not as a tragedy but as a liberation. Ursula marries her high school sweetheart, Jake, and settles in Vermont.

When Ursula gives birth to Louise, she invites Eleanor to Vermont for three days. Mother and daughter reconnect warmly. On the third night, Ursula speaks sympathetically about how heartbroken Cam was when "my mom left." Unable to contain herself after years of silence, Eleanor blurts out the truth: Cam had been having an affair with Coco before the divorce. Ursula is devastated and banishes her mother: "Don't come back. Don't plan on seeing your granddaughter ever again" (404).

Three years of silence follow. Eleanor publicly accuses Senator Matt Hallinan of rape on a national radio program, prompting four other women to come forward and ending his political career. Elijah, now a teenager, moves in with Eleanor to pursue music, and they develop an unexpected bond. Coco leaves Cam for another man and is severely injured in a motorcycle accident that kills the driver, Timmy Pouliot. Eleanor grieves privately for the man she realizes she loved.

The narrative returns to Al's wedding. Eleanor encounters her children together for the first time in years. Ursula is stiff but speaks to her, and Louise climbs into Eleanor's arms. After lightning topples Old Ashworthy and crushes the farmhouse beneath it, the fallen roots expose a time capsule the children had buried there years before, containing letters to their future selves. Al hoped for a computer, Ursula wished to stop being perfect, and Toby hoped for goats and happiness. All three wishes have come true.

Toby gives Al and Teresa two cork people he has made, telling them to launch the figures in the brook: "They'll always be out there someplace. The ocean, maybe" (435). After the reception, Cam and Eleanor walk together to the waterfall, where he tells her he has cancer. Eleanor offers to take care of him. The novel closes as they head back up the hill toward what remains of the farm: no house anymore, but home.