Novelist Roxana Robinson

Step into summertime with novelist Roxana Robinson, and yes, you'll have the twittering of finches in lilacs, long grass in the meadow, and the sunny house on the water. But the living is anything but easy.

Roxana Robinson has built a big following writing about the American attitude of entitlement — to happiness, to love, to virgin lands. But it's all so fragile.

This time out, in a novel called "Cost," on the coast of Maine, generations of one family collide around dementia and addiction, heroin and age.

This hour, On Point: Shooting up and breaking down, with Roxana Robinson and "Cost."Guest:

Roxana Robinson, author of the new novel "Cost." She's written three previous novels, several collections of short stories, and the biography "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life."