The Dutch House is the story of Danny Conroy and his older sister, Maeve. Narrated by Danny and moving back and forth in their history over the span of five decades, the novel chronicles how the siblings come to terms with the trauma of their early life.
The children live with their parents in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, in the astonishingly grandiose and old-fashioned Dutch House. The house was completed in 1922 by the VanHoebeeks, who made their fortune in cigarette distribution. After the VanHoebeeks died, the house went up for sale. Cyril purchased the house after WWII and moved his young family there. Elna, his wife, is never comfortable in the house, feeling unnerved and oppressed by it. When Danny is three and Maeve is seven, Elna, deemed “crazy” by many people, leaves her family permanently to go work for the poor in India. After her mother leaves, Maeve becomes extremely sick and almost dies; she is diagnosed with severe diabetes and requires lifelong attention to her condition.
Maeve essentially raises Danny, along with Sandy, the housekeeper, and Jocelyn, the cook and Sandy’s sister. They also have a young nanny for a while: Fluffy, who worked for the VanHoebeeks and then for the Conroys. After Elna leaves, Cyril has a sexual relationship with Fluffy, but he has no intention of marrying her even though she wishes he would. She is eventually fired for accidentally hitting Danny when he grabs at her skirt when she is cooking on the stove.
Cyril is a reserved man whose fortune is in real estate. He loves his children but is not particularly close to them, though Danny always goes with him to his buildings and to pick up the tenants’ rent, a ritual which he loves. He hopes to take over his father’s business someday.
One day, Cyril brings home Andrea Smith, a pretty young woman. Danny and Maeve do not know what to make of her and assume her presence will be short-lived. Unfortunately, she is on her way to becoming Cyril’s wife and bringing her own two young girls, Norma and Bright, into the family.
Andrea is haughty, dispassionate, and self-interested. She does not at all like Maeve and Danny and barely tolerates them as her stepchildren; everyone does their own thing, and even Cyril does not seem too happy to have married Andrea. Maeve goes off to Barnard for undergrad and Danny goes to high school. When Maeve graduates she takes a job working for Mr. Otterson, a frozen vegetable distributor. Danny knows this is so she can stay close to him.
When Danny is fifteen, he and Maeve get the news that their father has died of a heart attack and falling down some stairs in an unfinished building. They mourn with Sandy and Jocelyn but forget to notify Andrea. When Andrea finds out, she is deeply wounded by not only her husband’s death but also being the last to find out. She holds this against the children forever.
Not long after the funeral is held, Maeve suggests she can help take over the accounting for the Conroy real estate business. Andrea refuses to allow her to do so but says nothing else. Within a short period of time, Andrea brings the two together and tells them coolly that she will no longer take care of them. Her name is on the house, the business, and everything else, and she does not want these spiteful children here anymore. Maeve and Danny are astonished, especially when Andrea spontaneously includes Sandy and Jocelyn in the exile. The sisters jab at Andrea by saying that she’s no Elna Conroy, who was a saint, and they do not know why Mr. Conroy married her.
For a couple weeks, Danny lives with Maeve in her apartment and continues going to school. When the family lawyer tells the children that Cyril set up a trust for education for Danny and the two Smith girls, Maeve jumps at the opportunity for Danny to start going to the most expensive schools—Choate boarding school, Columbia, medical school—to use up as much money in the trust as he can. Danny does not want to do any of that, but he defers to his sister.
The years pass. Danny finishes boarding school and goes to Columbia as pre-med. He almost fails Organic Chemistry, but a kindly professor who later becomes a father-figure intervenes to set him on the right path. He meets a pretty young woman named Celeste and they start dating. Maeve continues to work for Otterson, which she will do for the rest of her life. Danny visits home to see his sister often, and the two begin a tradition of parking on the street outside the Dutch House. There they smoke, reminisce about their childhood, and try to work through their complicated memories.
Danny enters medical school. Celeste wants to marry him, but he is not ready, so they break up. They eventually get back together, marry; they have two kids, May and Kevin, and live in New York. Danny is never excited about becoming a doctor but goes through all his training all the same. However, towards the end of it, he makes a series of real estate investments that profoundly excite him and make him to decide to give up his medical career. Celeste is not exactly pleased, always having hoped she’d be married to a doctor. Danny’s business booms and he feels content with his choice.
Danny remains close to his sister, who does all the accounting and taxes for his business. Celeste and Maeve despise each other, and Danny tries to manage their acrimony. Maeve loves her niece and nephew, though, never having married or had children herself.
The siblings maintain contact with Sandy and Jocelyn and eventually Fluffy as well, whom Maeve initially encounters and who then meets with Danny. Danny realizes he was wrong about his assumptions of her and she becomes his and Celeste’s nanny for a while. Fluffy also tells Danny that she saw Elna alive and well in New York; she’d been back in the States for a while. Danny has no sympathy for his mother and does not want to think about her and how she abandoned her children; he also does not tell Maeve because he does not want to jeopardize her health.
Maeve and Danny eventually decide to stop going to the Dutch House, realizing how much they’d made a fetish of their misery.
Maeve has several health scares, including a heart attack when she is in her early fifties. When this happens, Elna resurfaces, at which point she and Maeve become extremely close. Whereas Maeve has come to terms with the past and is glad to have a mother again, Danny has trouble forgiving Elna and does not like her presence in their lives. He only becomes decent when Maeve confronts him about his coldness.
Things settle for a bit. May and Kevin enjoy getting to know their grandmother, and vice versa. Elna and May do lots of things together, and Maeve seems healthy and very happy.
One day, Elna is driving Danny and Maeve and pulls up to the Dutch House. She thinks they should all go inside and confront their trauma. Maeve does not want to, but she tells the two others to do so. When they get near the house, Andrea, now a very old woman, comes running out, hysterically crying and flinging herself on Danny. Maeve gets out to try to pull her off. Andrea seems to think Danny is Cyril.
It turns out that Andrea has extensive memory loss and is being cared for by a nurse and Norma, now a doctor, who moved home to be with her mother. The three Conroys enter the Dutch House and marvel that nothing has changed. Elna’s penchant for compassion for those who cannot take care of themselves manifests itself when she sees Andrea. She is exceedingly kind to her, and when they all leave the house, Elna tells Maeve she is going to help out there.
At this, Maeve is furious, having only just gotten her mother back. Elna can do nothing about it, though, because she feels the need to be useful. She begins going to the Dutch House and taking care of Andrea.
Maeve dies two weeks later; Danny blames his mother and cannot forgive her for a long time. He and Celeste end up divorcing amicably. May and Kevin go off to college, and May is on her way to becoming a famous actress. Danny visits the Dutch House one day and talks with his mother. He is finally able to forgive her, and the two establish a more comfortable relationship.
Andrea passes away, Elna stays on as caretaker with Sandy, and Norma says she will wait a couple of years to sell the house to May, who has always been enamored with the house (Bright is estranged from Andrea and wants nothing to do with the house or anything else). May does indeed become famous and wealthy, and she buys the house. By doing so, she allows her father to ultimately find a degree of peace with his past.
