The Burgess Boys: A Novel

a novel

Plot

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton comes “a portrait of an American community in turmoil that’s as ambitious as Philip Roth’s American Pastoral but more intimate in tone” (Time).“What truly makes Strout exceptional . . . is the perfect balance she achieves between the tides of story and depths of feeling.”—Chicago TribuneA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Good HousekeepingHaunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride.  But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed the brothers’ relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.This edition includes an original essay by Elizabeth Strout about the origins of The Burgess Boys.