LLL | The Unfolding: A Novel

Labyrinth and the Princeton Public Library present A.M. Homes, who will discuss The Unfolding, a stunning alternative history that is prescient, tender, and funny and is her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, with historian Laura F. Edwards.

The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life no lived, while his 18-year-old daughter Meghan begins to realize that her favorite subject –history—is not exactly what her father taught her.

Homes unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy – and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the same words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

A.M. Homes is the author of thirteen books, among them the best-selling memoir The Mistress’ Daughter; the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice, and Jack; and the short story collections Days of Awe, The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She also writes for film and television and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Laura F. Edwards is a legal historian whose research focuses on the nineteenth-century United States. Her prize winning books include Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era; The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in Post-Revolutionary South; and most recently Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the 19^th century U.S.

This event is part of Labyrinth’s and the Princeton Public Library’s joint programming and is cosponsored by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Humanities Council.