HOUSE OF HAPPY ENDINGS: A MEMOIR, by Leslie Garis, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 339 pages, $25
When I was small, my dad used to read a chapter of an Uncle Wiggily book to me every night before I went to bed. Those of us who grew up reading the Uncle Wiggily, Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift books will be very interested in this heartfelt memoir, "House of Happy Endings."
Written by Leslie Garis, the granddaughter of Howard Garis, the creator of those children's classics, this book gets on the inside of the big, romantic house in Amherst, Mass., that was formally named The Dell.
In fact, the Garises — including Mom, Dad, Leslie and her two brothers, plus grandparents — were determined to live the same kind of idyllic life they were writing about. But Roger Garis, Leslie's father, was a writer who constantly struggled for recognition. He developed serious mental problems resulting in frightening mood swings, as well as drug addiction. Gradually, this problem adversely affected everyone around him and everything they did.
Leslie Garis proves herself a fine writer in her family tradition, capable of telling a difficult but fascinating story about the disintegration of a family. She remembers that her mother and father, and "Granny and Grampy," were amazing storytellers. It seemed to her that Grampy's were always the best — and the least probable.
Grampy created a rabbit with top hat and tails who lived in a small town called Woodland, with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and their animal friends. Leslie was known to her schoolmates as the granddaughter of Uncle Wiggily — and at home she was expected to be just as "energetic, successful and well-groomed" as the make-believe rabbit.
It puzzled Leslie to learn as she grew up that all the many children's books in her father's study were written mostly by Grampy — with Granny doing some of them and her father doing a half-dozen. But all of them were attributed to pseudonyms.
Uncle Wiggily and Tom Swift books were written by Victor Appleton, and the Bobbsey Twins books were written by Laura Lee Hope, Judy Jordan, Nancy Brandon, Connie Loring, Barbara Hale, etc.
Most of the money, if not the credit for the books, went to Edward Stratemeyer, who hired a stable of writers to produce books for $75 each.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. As Roger Garis tried to succeed as a playwright, the uncertainties of production and acceptance pretty much overwhelmed the family. The more he wrote, the more his mind sank into oblivion.
This book is very well-written. The author completely captures the stark divide between the occasional success of the family and its consistent degradation. Uncle Wiggily and all his creators turned into unmitigated tragedy.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com