by Meg Wolitzer
First published 1986
Sylvia Gellburg is a content housewife in 1950s New Jersey. But her placid world shatters when her husband, a bank manager, becomes fixated on a news story about anti-Semitic violence. As Sylvia's own traumatic history emerges, she must confront the lies and guilt she's buried for decades. Can she reconcile her painful past with the illusion of domestic bliss? Wolitzer weaves a gripping tale of identity, memory, and the consequences of silence.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New Jersey
Period: 1950s
304 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin