First published 1996
Olivia de Havilland Hand completes her freshman year and heads back to Tahlequah, Oklahoma for what becomes an extraordinary summer. Tornadoes sweep across the heartland while the Soviet Union collapses on television screens. Olivia wants to understand her Cherokee heritage and figure out who she really is. She walks under the maple trees where she played as a child and drives the gravel roads where she learned to handle a car. But family complications follow her everywhere. Her sister Jessie struggles with a newborn in New Orleans. Her anthropology professor conducts a turbulent affair with another academic. Her aunt pursues a poet in Boston. Her father worries about losing both daughters. Olivia also reconnects romantically with Bobby Tree, her former boyfriend. These relationships stretch across the country and link her past to her present. Everyone searches for peace and love amid the chaos. National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist brings her signature insight and humor to this story about the Hand family.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, american, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Tahlequah, Oklahoma, New Orleans
Period: Freshman Year, Summer
320 pages · Paperback · Faber and Faber