A touching tale about one family’s home — and its uncertain legacy

My grandmother Big Mama always said that when she died she wanted her home to stay in the family. Specifically, she wanted my disabled brother, who couldn’t work much, to always have a place to live.

I tried to persuade Big Mama to put her wishes in a will.

She never did.

And soon after she died, the home was sold.

I get so sad when I ride by that rowhouse in Baltimore. The hedges that my grandmother so meticulously kept trimmed were cut down by the new owner. The front-yard flowers are gone. It’s unfortunate that the house she worked so hard to pay off is no longer in our family. Big Mama had wanted it to be a refuge.

The lesson is that if you want to leave a financial legacy, you have to do more than just tell folks about it. You have to plan for it. In the case of a home, you have to make provisions for it to stay in the family. How will the mortgage be paid off, if there is one? How will necessary improvements be covered? What about taxes?

In her debut novel, Angela Flournoy explores the issue of family and finances by taking us into the lives of a Detroit family headed by Francis and Viola Turner. I’ve picked her book “The Turner House” as the Color of Money Book Club selection for this month. It’s just been released in paperback (Mariner Books, $14.95).

Typically, my picks are directly related to personal finance. But on occasion, I like to select something out of the box. I’m a member of a separate book club that reads mostly fiction. “The Turner House,” a National Book Award finalist, was a recent choice.

As I read the book, I was enthralled by the financial messages Flournoy weaves in and out of the legacy left by her characters. Here was a low-income couple who migrated from the South, and who realized the American Dream of homeownership.

But Francis dies and Viola needs too much care to stay in the home alone. So she moves in with her eldest son, Cha-Cha, who is the most financially responsible of the lot.

There are a number of themes in the book (a ghost, an attempt at financial fraud, addiction, secrets), but what I suspect many of you will relate to are the struggles of taking care of an aging parent and the income disparity and varying degrees of financial responsibility that often create issues among siblings.

Central to the story is the question of what to do with the house on Yarrow Street, where the Turners raised their 13 children. Lelah, the youngest sibling, gets evicted from her apartment and secretly moves into the house, which had been empty. Her financial troubles stem from a gambling addiction.

Before moving in with her son, Viola, on the advice of her daughter Netti, refinances into a $40,000 mortgage.

The 2008 housing crisis crashed home values, and the market value of the Turners’ home plunged to just $4,000.

Netti defends the decision to refinance.

“All of y’all were broke or busy feeding your kids, and those Social Security checks weren’t enough for mama to survive on,” Netti tells her siblings during a family meeting to discuss what to do with the house.

Cha-Cha, who stepped in to take charge of his mother’s financial affairs after she had a stroke, wants to sell.

Some siblings agree. Others want to hold on to their childhood home.

Each sibling “took a quick assessment of the level of personal guilt in the situation,” Flournoy writes. “When was the last time they’d lived on Yarrow? The last time they’d visited, or added equity to the house in some way or not?”

Silently, to themselves, Flournoy adds, they all “conclude that they were culpable in some way or other, even if it was just for not having enough money saved up to hand over the $40,000 right now.”

Viola, who had lived on Yarrow Street for 50 years, doesn’t want to sell either, telling her grown children: “I plan on moving back as soon as I get strong again.”

Amid the angst in “The Turner House” are humor and an absorbing look at the dynamics that can keep a family together or tear it apart. Finally there is a realization that a home may be lost but never the memories made within its walls.