The Sorrows of an American
ABOUT
THE BOOK
After their father’s funeral, Erik and Inga Davidsen find a cryptic letter from an unknown woman among his papers, dating from his adolescence in rural Minnesota during the Depression. Returning to his psychiatric practice in New York, Erik sets about reading his father’s memoir, hoping to discover the man he never fully understood.
At the same time, another woman enters Erik’s lonely, divorced life – a beautiful Jamaican who moves into his garden flat with her small daughter. As Erik gets drawn into the cat-and-mouse tactics of someone who appears to be stalking her, he finds out that his sister Inga is also being threatened, by a journalist in possession of a wounding secret from her past.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The narrator is grieving for his deceased father, who seems to have kept a secret. A novel about family, loss, grief, art and the immigrant experience which revels the frailties of the human mind.