"Home is Where the Heart Is." Whether embroidered with red yarn on a small white pillow or painted in some bubbly scene with roses and hearts, this simple phrase finds its way into almost every house. These words strike up, even in the least sentimental person, feelings of warmth, comfort, parents, and small wagging tails. Not every home though, is the perfect structure of stability and refuge. In her novel, "Housekeeping," Marilynne Robinson shares with the reader a world where home is as unsecured as loose rocks on a steep hill. Robinson challenges the established definitions of what a home is by making the inanimate object a dynamic and representative character. She demonstrates this contrast in two strong characters: our narrator Ruth and her sister Lucille. There is a sense of duality in the two characters, a question of how life is defined. Ruth's character is unyieldingly passive...