First published 2024
Gaston and Lucienne Cassar build their marriage on the myth of perfect love, but this ideal becomes a burden for their children. The pied-noir family scatters during World War II in 1940, then flees their colonial home as Algeria moves toward independence. Without a country to call their own after 1962, the Cassars drift across decades in permanent exile. Their son François bonds deeply with his sister Denise over their family's peculiar displacement. When François marries Barbara, a woman from a completely different culture, they struggle to understand each other across the vast gulf between their backgrounds. Their daughter Chloe grows up carrying the weight of these buried family stories. She believes that finally speaking these long-hidden truths aloud will heal the wounds that have shaped three generations of Cassars.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: displacement, found-family
Setting: Algeria
Period: 1940, 1962
448 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: colonialism