Elżbieta “Elzie” McGillicuddy knows the Ten Commandments by heart. She also knows that families rarely make it easy to obey them.

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From her small apartment in Los Angeles, the irrepressible Polish-American grandmother dispenses soup, unsolicited wisdom, and occasional theological revisions to anyone who enters her kitchen. Her daughter Margie is exhausted from keeping peace with a domineering husband. Her granddaughter Venice questions everything adults claim to believe. And a frightened teenage neighbor is carrying a secret that will test Elzie’s faith in ways no priest ever prepared her for.

 

Then Elzie wins $12.5 million in the Easter lottery.

 

Her son-in-law immediately announces that the family is set for life. Margie begins imagining freedom from bills and obligations. Only Venice asks the question no one else considers: What does Elzie want?

 

Convinced that sudden wealth will expose the worst in the people she loves, Elzie hides the winning ticket inside Bobo, the battered teddy bear she brought with her from Poland. But one protective lie leads to another, and soon every commandment—honor, fidelity, truth, envy, theft, and even the meaning of life itself—becomes painfully personal.

 

Warm, witty, and morally searching, The Commandments of Elzie McGillicuddy is a multigenerational novel about faith, family, fortune, and one formidable woman’s discovery that protecting the people we love is not the same as controlling their lives.