First published 2026
Dr. Henry Brier has built what looks like an ideal life with his wife Lora and their three young children in 1950s Midwest America. But Henry cannot stop cheating. When he abandons his family without warning to move across town with his latest mistress, the Briers' comfortable world collapses. Lora struggles to understand what went wrong while trying to keep her children fed and housed. Their eldest daughter Josie watches her mother's confusion and her father's betrayal, trying to make sense of the lies that held their family together. The story moves between Henry's self-serving justifications, Lora's bewildered attempts to survive, and Josie's painful awakening to adult deception. Set against the backdrop of postwar American prosperity, this compact novel reveals how one man's selfish choices destroy the people who trusted him most.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: betrayal, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Midwest America
Period: 1950s
256 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company