Ein Anruf der Anwaltskanzlei Rogers & Rogers verändert schlagartig das Leben des Literaturprofessors Samuel Anderson. Er, der als Kind von seiner Mutter verlassen wurde, soll nun für sie bürgen: Nach einem tätlichen Angriff auf einen republikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten verlangt man von ihm, ihre Integrität zu bezeugen, obwohl er sie seit mehr als zwanzig Jahren nicht gesehen hat. Ein Gedanke, der ihm zunächst völlig abwegig erscheint. Doch Samuel will auch endlich begreifen, was damals wirklich geschehen ist. Ein allumfassender, mitreißender Roman über Liebe, Unabhängigkeit, Verrat und die lebenslange Hoffnung auf Erlösung, ein Familienroman und zugleich eine pointierte Gesellschaftsgeschichte von den Chicagoer Aufständen 1968 bis zu Occupy Wall Street.

'The best new writer of fiction in America. The best.' - John Irving

Nathan Hill's brilliant debut takes the reader from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street; from Chicago in 1968, to wartime Norway: home of the mysterious Nix.

Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she's facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel's help.

As Samuel begins to excavate his mother's, and his country's, history, he will unexpectedly find that he has to rethink everything he ever knew about her - a woman with an epic story of her own, a story she has kept hidden from the world.

Autor narra com humor a saga de um protagonista atormentado pelo passado da própria família.

Em seu elogiado romance de estreia, Nathan Hill conta o drama tragicômico de Samuel Anderson, um escritor fracassado obrigado a lidar com antigas feridas, reabertas pelo inesperado ressurgimento da mãe, Faye, que abandonou a família quando ele era criança.

Faye é acusada de um crime absurdo registrado em um vídeo que viraliza na internet. A surpresa de Samuel é ainda maior ao perceber que, ao contrário da imagem de boa moça que se casou cedo com o namoradinho da escola, a mídia passa a retratá-la como uma hippie radical de passado sórdido.

Engraçado e inteligente, Nix apresenta uma trama ao mesmo tempo contemporânea e atemporal, ao abordar, através de gerações, as dores cíclicas de uma família que mal se conhece.