Burn Then, Little Lamp — Margaret S. Banister

The Armisteads and the Jeremys lived next door to each other on the pleasant outskirts of a Virginia town. The children of the two families grew up together -- five Jeremy boys, three Armistead girls and their two brothers.

In a sense this is a novel of the two families from childhood into middle age, but really it is Norrie Armistead's story, she being the “steady one” who so often held things together. For tragedy, violence, eccentricity and selfishness underlay the serenity of these well-bred Virginia lives.

But Norrie's strength did not come without painful conflict, and when she thought she had found the Rock on which she could build her life, it suddenly was revealed to her that, in spite of the long struggle, she had caught only a flawed image of it.