Books, Arts & Manners: Home Alone

At the Still Point: A Memoir, by Carol Buckley (Simon & Schuster, 255 pp., $23)

IT begins as a peculiarly American fairy tale: Under the burning Mexican sun, a vivacious German Swiss New Orleans belle meets and marries a reserved, older Irish Texan oil wildcatter. They live happily ever after, and in the process spawn a talented brood of ten children, the most famous of whom, William F. Buckley Jr., transforms America’s political landscape.