<p><span style="color: rgba(34, 34, 34, 1)">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). </span></p><p><span style="color: rgba(34, 34, 34, 1)">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. </span></p><p><span style="color: rgba(34, 34, 34, 1)">Though </span><em style="color: rgba(34, 34, 34, 1)">Underneath the Quiet</em><span style="color: rgba(34, 34, 34, 1)"> 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.</span></p>