Pitch Uncertain is a touching and incisive account of Maisie Houghton's struggle to find her own voice as the middle child of two parents whose marriage and lives she slowly decoded as she came of age in the 1950s. Growing up in the gentle ambience of Cambridge, Massachusetts, spending full summers in Dark Harbor, Maine, and regularly visiting her relatives in the socially polished reaches of greater New York, Maisie and her two sisters had the makings of an ideal childhood, except for the enigma of their parents. Their mother, Sybil Jay, was the "gentle doe" of an accomplished New York family with a resilient matriarchy. Charming and independent, Maisie's father, Frankie Kinnicutt, was the handsome, fun-loving son of stolid New Yorkers whose emotional reserve and
perfectly decorated residences were a stiff contrast to the liveliness of the Jay household. As parents, Sybil was diligent, caring and attentive -an anchor for the family, while Frankie was independent, playful, curious and remote - more sail than anchor. With a novelist's sense of moment, Houghton explores her
individually appealing parents and their estranged but oddly loyal relationship in the context of their era and genteel culture.
Maisie Houghton was born in New York City and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. She has lived in Corning, New York, for over forty years.
Pitch Uncertain is her first book.
