Baby of the Family: A Novel

Maura Roosevelt

mars 2019 · Penguin Random House Audio · Lu par Saskia Maarleveld

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A wry and addictive debut about a modern-day American dynasty and its unexpected upheaval when the patriarch wills his dwindling fortune to his youngest, adopted son—setting off a chain of events that unearths secrets and tests long-held definitions of love and family.
 
The money is old, the problems are new.
 
Meet the Whitbys: an American dynasty once inundated with ungodly real estate wealth and now facing a new millennium of unfamiliar obstacles.
 
There was a time when the death of a Whitby would have made national news, but when the family patriarch, Roger, dies, he is alone. Word of his death travels from the long-suffering family lawyer to Roger’s clan of children (from four different marriages), and the outlook isn’t good. Roger has left everything to his twenty-one-year-old son Nick, a Whitby only in name—and Nick is nowhere to be found.
 
Brooke, an older daughter who is both overwhelmingly nostalgic and unexpectedly pregnant, leads the search for Nick, hoping to convince him to let her keep her Boston home. Shelley, the only child from the third marriage, hasn’t told anyone that she’s dropped out of college just months before graduation and is currently working as an amanuensis for a blind architect, with whom she crosses complicated boundaries. And when Nick, on the run from the law after a misguided act of political activism, finally appears at Shelley’s New York home, worlds collide and explode in spectacular fashion. Soon, the three siblings are faced with the question they have been running from their whole lives: What do they want their future to look like, if they can finally escape their past?
 
Weaving together multiple perspectives to create a portrait of the American dream gone awry, Baby of the Family is a vivid, absorbing debut about family secrets and how they define us, bind us together, and threaten to blow us apart.

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Maura Roosevelt has taught critical and creative writing at NYU and the University of Southern California. She holds an MFA from NYU and a BA from Harvard College, and is currently completing a PhD at Teachers College, where she studies how to enhance students’ equity and access to writing education. Her work has been published in places like The Nation and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Baby of the Family was developed from a short story with the same title, which was published in Joyland magazine and given an award for “Most Read Story of 2014.” Maura is also the great-granddaughter of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt.