First published 2022
The Sullivan family has built their lives around three unshakeable truths. The Chicago Cubs will never win. Progress moves forward. And their grandfather Bud makes the finest burgers in Oak Park at his restaurant, JP Sullivan's. Then 2016 arrives like a wrecking ball. In three bewildering months, the Cubs capture the World Series after 108 years of futility. Donald Trump wins the presidency. Bud collapses and dies, leaving behind his restaurant and a family suddenly adrift. Everything the Sullivans believed about the world proves wrong. The family members struggle to find their footing as their fundamental assumptions about life, politics, and their own identity dissolve. With their patriarch gone and their worldview shattered, they must navigate grief while questioning everything they once held sacred. The story explores how a family copes when the impossible becomes reality and the certain becomes uncertain.
Genres: american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief, identity-crisis
Setting: Chicago, Oak Park
Period: 2016
496 pages · Library Binding · Center Point