by Hernán Díaz
First published 2022
Hernán Díaz's "Trust" opens on a man poring over a mysterious manuscript. As he reads, the story of a Gilded Age fortune unfolds. We meet the Banning Leach family, whose vast wealth hides a tangled web of deceit and mental illness. When the patriarch's health declines, his wife and children must confront long-buried truths about their family's rise to power. Shifting between past and present, "Trust" is a layered exploration of identity, perception, and the corrosive nature of privilege.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: deception, unreliable-narrator
Setting: United States
Period: Gilded Age
402 pages · Hardcover · Riverhead Books
Content warnings: mental-illness