Schroder

A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.

Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder -- a first-generation East German immigrant -- adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.

SCHRODER relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand -- and maybe even explain -- his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father.

Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives -- those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Twelve
Published: 02/01/2013
ISBN: 9781455512133
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.81w x 0.99d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2012
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2012
Library Journal 09/01/2012 pg. 78
Publishers Weekly 10/22/2012
Booklist 11/01/2012 pg. 25
Kirkus Bea Big Book Guide 05/15/2012 pg. 9
People Weekly 02/11/2013 pg. 57
New York Times Book Review 03/03/2013 pg. 14
New York Times Book Review 03/10/2013 pg. 26
Entertainment Weekly 03/29/2013 pg. 77
New Yorker (The) 04/15/2013 pg. 77
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/04/2013 pg. 22
Kirkus Best Fiction 11/15/2013 pg. 15
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/08/2013 pg. 27