Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things in order at home, but she's been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and can never find the right moment to confront its swelling contents.

In an attempt to climb out of the holes they've dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children - especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them.

The Hole We're In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of our day - over-reliance on credit, vexed gender-and-class politics, the war in Iraq - but it is Gabrielle Zevin's exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.