December 1971. A brutal Midwestern winter gathers over Chicago. Parish priest Russ Hildebrandt is on the verge of ending an unhappy marriage—unaware that his wife, Marion, is equally exhausted by its monotony and guarding secrets of her own. Their eldest, Clem, returns from college with a decision that will upend his father’s certainties. Becky, the high-school queen, is swept into a fervent spiritual quest. Perry, dealing drugs to junior-high kids, resolves to change and become someone better.

In the Hildebrandt home, each person reaches for freedom, and each blocks the others’ way. With this single family as his lens, Jonathan Franzen captures the exhilaration and disorder of 1970s America—the rising tide of idealism set against a deepening moral unease. This is a novel about love and estrangement, about fathers and sons, about the patterns children inherit and resist, and the wounds relatives inflict through indifference. At life’s crossroads, the cost of freedom is bitter, yet the possibility of grace endures. Life is messy—and, somehow, wonderful.