Maureen and Bertha Callahan are competitive sisters in a dysfunctional family in 1932 Riverside, California, whose relationship is made even more complex by Maureen’s unique perspective and behaviors (guided by what today might be called autism).

Into their world, launches handsome Cuthbert, the disgraced scion of a wealthy New York family. Though he becomes part of the Callahan social circle when he begins a painting of the family house, Cuthbert is ever more entangled in it when he finds love with a young man who has been riding the rails from San Antonio, Texas.

Though Underneath the Quiet hurtles toward a culminating grand party, a rifle, and a double murder, Mark Albro has not written just a twisty family drama but an exploration of life on the autism spectrum, a historical novel about sometimes surprising social norms, and a love letter to a vanishing Southern California, where wonderful orange groves are being replaced by cookie-cutter tract houses.