Book description
Attending a New England summer camp as an adolescent, young Erik
Schroder - a first generation East German immigrant - adopts a new
name and a new persona - Eric Kennedy - in the hopes that it will
help him fit in. This fateful white lie will set him on an
improbable and ultimately tragic course.
Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years
later through the New England countryside with his six-year-old
daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amidst 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 in order to understand - and maybe
even explain - his behaviour; 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.
Amity Gaige is the author of O My Darling and The
Folded World. Her essays, articles and stories have appeared in
various publications including the Yale Review, The Literary
Review, Los Angeles Times and O Magazine. She is the
recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a McDowell Colony Fellowship, and
a Baltic Writing Residency Fellowship, and is currently the Visiting
Writer at Amherst College. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with
her family.