A combination of memory, stories, and research, The House of Many Doors draws readers into the lives of two immigrant families—one German, on Italian—who left all they had ever known for the promise of work in the coal mines and rail yards of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th Century.

As the author steps into the shoes of the ten family members profiled here and fills in historical details, each person emerges as a complex, flawed, and more remarkable human being than she had ever imaged. Walking with them through wars, immigration, the Great Depression, grueling work lives in the rail yards and coal mines, the unyielding drudgery of domestic life, and the struggles to move up generation by generation, readers will discover lives lived in the fulcrum between dark and light, joy and sorrow, regret and hope.