One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year—a masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother's collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.
"A sweeping family epic that took me from one American coast to another.Simpson is so attuned to the family heart." —Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay
When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn't, she's worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother's dreams for them alive.
At Berkeley, Walter discovers a...