The Doorposts of Your House and on Your Gates

Does any family better fit the Anna Karenina principle— that happy families are alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—better than the patriarchs of the Book of Genesis? Is there any worse (or crazier) father than Abraham? These are some of the questions The Doorposts of Your House and on Your Gates asks, replacing the biblical Ur with New York and the land of Canaan with the rugged hills and rusted river valleys of western Pennsylvania. Fleeing a failed relationship, Isabel Giordani leaves New York and moves across the Appalachians to Pittsburgh, where she soon begins to insinuate herself into the lives of Isaac Mayer and his father, Abbie, an architect turned crooked real estate developer. As Isabel learns this family’s weird, often sordid, and occasionally violent history, her own motives for entering their lives are called into question, in Jacob Bacharach’s new novel that considers love, family, God, and, of course, real estate.