Over the past several months, my two book clubs have selected a variety of fiction and nonfiction, but the themes have been dark. I threw in another dark work, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. After about the fifth or sixth book about human behavior at its worst, I realized the impact they were having on my state of mind.

Time for a reprieve. I turned to a favorite author, Ann Patchett, and a book I’ve had waiting in my TBR pile: The Dutch House. I marvel at how each of Patchett’s books is so different from the others. Settings, characters, and plots change dramatically from book to book. This story was the antidote to the ugly human activities I’d been immersed in.

True, there is an antagonist, as all stories must have, but she is a mild version of the “wicked stepmother” trope. The other characters all leave you feeling hopeful about the state of humanity.

The narrator is Danny Conroy, whose father made his fortune in the investment real estate business. Father, Cyril Conroy, decided to surprise his wife and young daughter Maeve with a new home—a mansion known as the Dutch House after the previous owners, the VanHoebeeks, both deceased. The mansion came with a servant, known as Fluffy.

What Cyril didn’t realize was that his wife had no desire for wealth or luxury. The surprise fell flat. She spent more and more time away from home until she decided to vanish altogether, abandoning Cyril, Maeve, and Danny, who was too young to remember her after she left.

Eventually, a young woman with two daughters persuades Cyril to take her for his second wife. Andrea and her girls move into the Dutch House, Andrea’s true object of desire.

Maeve and Danny do their best to get along with the newest family members, but Maeve is soon off to college. When their father suddenly dies, everything changes. Danny, still in high school, is summarily ejected from the Dutch House by his stepmother. He has to rely on Maeve, who supports the two of them with her job as an administrator at a frozen food company.

Maeve hatches a plan to spend the education fund left by their father to give Danny the most expensive education possible, from boarding prep school through medical school. She hopes to deprive her stepsisters in the process, as a way of getting back at Andrea. The only problem is that Danny has no desire to be a doctor. He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps in the real estate business.

The book gives us an intimate look at the relationship between the two siblings, and their relationships with Fluffy and two sisters who also worked at the Dutch House. The deep sense of love and concern among them provided all the necessary feel-goods I desperately desired. Yes, a trove of real, warm humans, flawed but doing their best to do the right thing.

My one criticism of Patchett’s work here is her decision not to tell the story chronologically. She moves back and forth through several timelines, forcing the reader to reorient often. We often find ourselves observing Maeve and Danny, sitting in a car at the curb, staring at the Dutch House across the street. They can’t seem to get over losing their home.

Patchett does eventually settle into a more straightforward timeline in the last part of the story. The ending provides a bit of karmic fulfillment as an extra treat, but in a somewhat bittersweet way.