However, Leviticus meets his end when, one day, he spontaneously combusts. He has Joe create an effigy of Bertha so she is always near.

He then moves into the residence over the bowling alley as a way to be as close as possible to Bertha's memory.

Leviticus, thinking he is protecting their daughter, sends Minna away with her nanny, Margaret. When a vat at a molasses plant in nearby Boston explodes, Bertha is killed. They go on to have a daughter, Minna, who takes after her father. She soon marries Leviticus, a sensitive man who writes poetry and detests the bowling alley. She hires Joe to manage the place, and she names Jeptha Arrison, who recently attempted suicide, as the chief pinsetter. Once out of the hospital, Bertha is a woman on a mission: She starts building a candlepin bowling alley that she christens Truitt's Alley. She has in her possession a candlepin and a bowling ball-and several pounds of precious gold. Leviticus Sprague, an African American doctor in town, confirms that Bertha is alive. Discovering her unconscious near the obelisk, Joe Wear is convinced she was dead but has now returned to the land of the living. The novel opens by introducing Bertha Truitt, who seemingly appears out of nowhere one spring day in the Salford Cemetery. A national bestseller, Bowlaway ended up on several best-of lists for 2019, including those published by Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Publishers Weekly, and O. Set in the small town of Salford, Massachusetts, American author Elizabeth McCracken’s novel Bowlaway (2019) tells the story of a candlepin bowling alley and the three generations of a quirky New England family whose lives revolve around it.

Bowlaway elizabeth mccracken