Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

This book was not about its name.  There was not much housekeeping going on in the plot.  The book is about Ruth and Lucille, who come with thier mother to live with their grandparents in the small town of Fingerbone.  After Grandfather is killed in a train derailment, their mother commits suicide and the girls begin life with their grandmother.  After she dies, her two sisters, the girls' great aunts, come to live with her.  They are not much for raising two preteen girls, so they start looking for the girls' aunt Sylvie, a vagabond, to come take care of them so the aunties can go back to their lives. 

After the aunties find Sylvie, they leave and Sylvie takes over raising the girls.  Sylvie is not much of a mother to them and they just about do what they want, skipping school and just doing whatever strikes their fancy.   Sylvie doesn't see that the girls are clothed well, cooks only sproadically, sits in the dark and hoards tin cans, jars and newspapers.  When the situation becomes too much, Lucille moves out of the house and moves in with her teacher.  Since she is no longer there, Sylvie and Ruth start wandering the countryside. Ruth never shows up for school.  One day, Sylvie takes Ruth across the lake to see some ruined cabins she found, they get lost and end up spending the night on the lake, hitching a ride on a freight train and get the attention of the Sherrif.  When he threatens to take Ruth away, Sylvie sets the house on fire and she and Ruth escape back to the life of intenerant vagabonds with no roots. 

This was a sad book about never being settled in life and not putting down roots.