by Lorrie Moore
First published 2009
Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin leaves her family's potato farm for college in a Midwestern university town. Her mind burns with literature from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath as the United States mobilizes for Middle Eastern conflict. Between semesters, she accepts work as a part-time nanny for a family that strikes her as both enigmatic and sophisticated. Though children once seemed tedious to her, Tassie grows devoted to their recently adopted daughter, feeling protective as if the girl were her own. The deeper she becomes involved with this family, the more distant her home life appears. Her parents grow more fragile. Her younger brother drifts through high school, considering military service. Tassie recognizes herself becoming the outsider she always sensed she was. She confronts the subtle poison of racism and the arbitrary cruelty that people inflict while claiming to act from love. As her carefully ordered world collapses in dramatic and startling ways, Tassie undergoes a permanent transformation that leaves her forever altered by the year's events.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Midwest, United States
Period: 21st Century
322 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: racism