April 9 at 1:00 pm, Killingworth Library. The Keepers of the House is a 1964 novel by Shirley Ann Grau set in rural Alabama and covering seven generations of the Howland family that lived in the same house and built a community around themselves. As such, it is a metaphor for the long-established families of the Deep South of the United States, their encounter with changing values and norms, and the hypocrisy of racism.