Fatherland

A tale of the American dream on the rocks. A legacy of broken promises, deceit, and perseverance against the backdrop of family commitment. Martin and Lora Brier, with three young children, possess all the trappings of a perfect life . . . except Martin is having yet another affair. Without warning, he abandons the family for his mistress and a new house on the other side of town. Set in a prosperous midwestern town in the 1950s, Fatherland is a story about the effect of convenient lies and discovered truths. While Martin's abandonment throws up new difficulties for bewildered Lora, a housewife, who must now find a way to nurture and provide for herself and children, it unleashes a swirl of emotions in their daughter, Josie, who struggles to come to term with his absence. Fatherland follows Josie from this fateful event, across many decades and milestones and through the phases of her tenuous, emotionally fraught relationship with Martin—and the way she begins to move beyond their shared past. Written in Victoria Shorr's inimitable clean, spare prose, Fatherland is a powerful, layered novel of a family in the aftermath of deception.

Victoria Shorr is the author of four works of fiction, including the acclaimed novel The Plum Trees, which was listed as a New York Times Recommended Historical Fiction selection for 2021. She lives in New York.