"Beautiful, brilliant Lora defies the wishes of her affluent middle-class family when she quits college and elopes with Henry Brier, an upstart medical student, on the eve of his departure for the war in the South Pacific. Twelve years later, Henry and Lora are Dr. and Mrs. Henry Brier, admired and respected in their tight-knit community in Youngstown, Ohio, with three children, a gorgeous, well-appointed house on a tree-lined street, with a Buick in the garage and membership to the local country club, where the husbands play golf and the wives sip tea and martinis, and the kids frolic in the pool. Their lives could not be more idyllic ... except Henry is fed up with fatherhood, he's caught up in another affair, and he and Lora are on the brink of a scandalous divorce. When Henry abruptly abandons the family-resettling in a new house in the same town with a new wife and child-Lora and her children face the devastating question of how to move on from, and without, the husband and father they loved. Written in fluid, supple prose and infused with emotion, Fatherland is a story of an American Dream gone burst, of broken promises and commitments, but it is also a beautifully crafted paean to the joys of family and the benefits of community"-- Provided by publisher.

"Martin and Lora Brier, with three young children, possess all the trappings of a perfect life . . . except Martin is having yet another affair. Without warning, he abandons the family for his mistress and a new house on the other side of town. Set in a prosperous Midwestern town in the 1950s, Fatherland is a story about the effect of convenient lies and discovered truths. While Martin's abandonment throws up new difficulties for bewildered Lora, who must now find a way to nurture and provide for herself and children, it unleashes a swirl of emotions in their daughter, Josie, who struggles to come to term with her father's absence. Fatherland follows Josie from this fateful event, across many decades and milestones and through the phases of her tenuous, emotionally fraught relationship with Martin--and the way she begins to move beyond their shared past" Flap page 1 of dust jacket.