An East German immigrant pleads with his estranged wife for mercy after kidnapping their daughter during a parental visit in this lyrical novel—A New York Times Notable Book—A Washington Times Book of the Year.

"Agile . . . transporting . . . a book that works as both character study and morality play, filled with questions that have no easy answers." — New York Times

Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder—a first-generation East German immigrant—adopts the last name Kennedy to fit in more easily, 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.

"Impossible to put down." — Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)

"Gaige's spot-on prose makes this quirky parental drama irresistible."― Good Housekeeping

"Enthralling. . . . With its psychological acuity, emotional complexity and topical subject matter, it deserves all the success it can find." — The Washington Post

"Complicated and nuanced. . . . [ Schroeder ] is absorbing, with a propulsive plot and a narrator who is charming, ambivalent, and searching—a man driven by love who understands that love cannot save him." — The New Yorker