In her memoir House of Happy Endings, Leslie Garis describes a life at odds with that depicted in the well-known children's books written by her paternal grandparents. From the early 1900s through the 1950s, Howard Garis and his wife, Lilian, wrote several volumes of Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and Uncle Wiggly stories. These books, which were immensely popular, conveyed an idealized version of small-town American life. Yet, as Leslie Garis reveals, life with Howard and Lilian was far from perfect.
Before publication of her memoir, Leslie Garis was best known for her profiles of writers such as Georges Simenon, Marguerite Duras, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, John Fowles, and Harold Pinter for the New York Times Magazine. She has written about literary subjects for several national magazines and newspapers.
At MacDowell in 2005, Leslie worked on a memoir to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The book focuses on the emotional disintegration of her unusual family - three generations of writers.
Portrait by Gretchen Yengst
