First published 1985
Mitch Hampson fights to make ends meet while his wife Jean becomes the family's primary earner, working her way through college in their small American town. Their marriage strains under financial pressure as history presses in around them. Their children, Danner and Billy, form an unusually close bond as they watch their parents struggle. When Billy ships off to fight in Vietnam, Danner finds herself holding together the fragments of a family coming apart. The war that takes her brother away becomes the final fracture in a household already weakened by years of economic hardship and personal disappointment. As America itself splinters in the 1960s, the Hampson family's breakdown reflects the larger national trauma of a country losing its way.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, found-family
Setting: America, Vietnam
Period: 1960s
331 pages · Paperback · Faber and Faber
Content warnings: war