The children's crusade, by Ann Packer

When the patriarch of this family, a pediatrician by training, returns from Korea where he served on hospital ships, he stumbles across a lovely piece of property near San Francisco dominated by an ancient oak tree.  In time this property will become very valuable as Silicon Valley develops, but it is an almost wild area at this time and very affordable when he buys it, hoping to someday build a home and live there.  He meets a young women working as a clerk when he takes his father’s watch into be repaired.  They fall in love, soon marry, and his dream of living in a house on this land surrounded by his own children becomes a reality.  Penny, his wife, is less contented as the years go by.  The three R’s, Robert, Rebecca, and Ryan, are joined by the unexpected James as the family grows.  Robert will become a physician like his father, Rebecca a psychiatrist, Ryan a teacher, and James – well, James is a problem from the get-go.  A wild child full of energy and lacking inhibitions, he pushes Penny over the edge as a mother and she retreats to a shed she has converted to an artist’s studio.  Eventually she moves a bed in as well and her virtual divorce from the family’s life is complete.  The main action of the book occurs after the father, Bill, has died three years previously, Penny has long since decamped to Taos NM, and James unexpectedly comes back to the area after years as a wanderer.  He wants to sell the house.  Old injuries are revisited, and the family dynamics are explosive.  432 pp.