by Rufi Thorpe
First published 2017
Vera suffers a psychotic break at a high school party. Her father Lucas, who has been mostly absent from her life, decides to take her to Lithuania for the summer. He hopes the trip to his grandmother's homeland will help both of them heal. Vera is seventeen, brilliant, and struggling with her new mental health diagnosis. Lucas abandoned her as a baby when he and her mother Katya were just teenagers themselves, boarding school students who fell deeply in love. Now he wants to be the father she needs. In Vilnius, Lucas discovers secrets about his grandmother, who was a Home Army rebel that survived Stutthof concentration camp. Meanwhile, Vera searches for her own answers. She wants to understand why her father left her and what really happened during her breakdown. The story moves between family history and present struggles as father and daughter try to rebuild their relationship while confronting mental illness, family mythology, and the weight of the past.
Genres: literary-fiction, mental-illness, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, father-daughter-relationship, mental-illness
Setting: Lithuania, Stutthof, Vilnius
Period: 20th-century
321 pages · Paperback · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Content warnings: mental-illness