First published 2024
Carl Fletcher returns home to Long Island after less than a week in captivity, his ransom paid and his life intact. The millionaire and his family slip back into their comfortable routines as if nothing happened. Forty years later, the Fletchers gather for a funeral that forces their buried trauma into the open. Carl has spent decades trying to forget the kidnapping and the mystery of who orchestrated it. His wife Ruth devoted herself entirely to shielding him from further harm. Their children carry the weight differently. Nathan lives paralyzed by chronic fear. Beamer fled to Hollywood as a screenwriter, medicating his panic with food, drugs, and women. Jenny, the brightest of the three, has exhausted herself trying to prove she transcends her family's dysfunction, only to become defined by that very effort. The money that endangered them also bought their safety, but that protection may finally be running out.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Long Island
Period: 40 Years Later
464 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: kidnapping