The Brothers K

This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. Here there is a father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident, a mother who clings obsessively to a religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past; and four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has become.

By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, it is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years.