I recommend the writing of Pearl S. Buck. Her book, "Voices in the House," is a riotous clash between the compassionate civilized landowner and his sense of intrusion which extends beyond his own extending family to grandfathered servants in his employ. This attorney married the daughter who grew up on the Manchester, Vermont estate. He commutes to the city to at least give counsel to the indicted mobsters in their constitutionally preserved right to assert their defense. Meanwhile people are growing up around him and finding their own way, and one of them has dreams of inclusion that are denied, which creates her imbalance as daughter of the cook.

I remember standing in the dark peering into some diaramas of turn of the century New York, and would have remained there, in fact, did so in my imagination. This girl, of course, truly fits the part of leaving the servants' quarters and luxuriating about the main house. She also learned to speak well and receives favorable verbal descriptions of her general aura of lovliness.

Ms. Buck's reserved and curiously objective descriptions extend to all parties. At some point she pulls back from the main family, the husband and wife, to suggest this is all we can expect from them. Ultimately they explore and acknowledge their part in the bizarre turn of events...

Truly high level bizarre material has transpired by this time, involving a large protective attack dog and even sewing needles ???...

"We didn't just -- let her into the house."

Good idea! Welcome her. We grow from our dreams when we explore them in reality.

At the time of this book's publication, 1953, Ms. Buck was writing under the pseudonym of John Sedges.

To convey the pleasures and insights to be found within, here is an exerpt from the book which illuminates the meaning of Adam's Rib:

"Eve, made from the rib of Adam, was only the legend of the perverse and female moon torn from the side of the newly created globe of billions of years ago, and the gaping wound of the Pacific basin, raw basalt at the bottom, was still unhealed as man himself. And here was the moon as he had seen it last night, whirling above the yearning earth, remote and unreachable, never again to be joined, and yet pulling the earth's tides toward herself, only to reject them again and again in the ceaseless rise and fall of the rhythms of untiring creation. "

I read the 35 cent 1960 paperback Cardinal Edition with a cover that looks like it was painted by Darryl Green.