First published 2018
Meredith McKenzie grows up in postwar Germany watching her father prosecute Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. The daughter of Manhattan lawyers, she absorbs the stark battle between good and evil unfolding in the courtroom. Back in America, Meredith defies her conservative father's wishes and pursues law herself. Her liberal grandfather, who rises to the Supreme Court, encourages her rebellion. She rejects debutante traditions and befriends a young German Jewish woman whose family perished in concentration camps. Through the 1960s, Meredith throws herself into civil rights work and Vietnam War protests. She witnesses JFK's inauguration and lives through the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. As violence strikes her own family, Meredith must reconcile her ideals with devastating loss. Her journey transforms both her and those around her.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-secrets, idealism-vs-realism
Setting: Germany, Manhattan, America
Period: Postwar, 1960s
304 pages · Hardcover · Delacorte Press
Content warnings: violence