The Heart of It All

"For anyone who believes, as I do, that the best hope for our fractured country is local, not national, Christian Kiefer’s new novel The Heart of it All will provide a welcome balm for the spirit. Here are people worth spending time with, not because they’re perfect, but because they’re not. What’s wrong with them isn’t nearly as consequential as how hard they fight for a better life, and not just for themselves. You set the book down and think, ‘This is what we’re made of.’ Or should be."—Richard Russo, author of Somebody’s Fool

A small, declining town in Ohio. A family bereaved by terrible loss. A searing narrative about how American lives touch each other across divides both real and imagined...

Set in failing small town in central Ohio, The Heart of It All asks how one manages, in an America of increasing unsurety, to find a sense of family and community.

Focusing on the members of three families: the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community; the Marwats, an immigrant family that owns the town’s largest employer; and the Shaws, especially young Anthony, an outsider whose very presence gently shakes the town’s understanding of itself.

A gorgeous, stirring novel in the classic vein of Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Richard Russo, and Kent Haruf, The Heart of It All asks the reader to consider an America both divided and bound by its differences.

Christian Kiefer has a PhD in American literature from the University of California–Davis and directs the low-residency MFA at Ashland University. He is the author of three novels: The Infinite Tides (Bloomsbury), The Animals (Liveright) and most recently Phantoms (also Liveright,) which was one of Kirkus Reviews and BBC’s Best Books of 2019. He lives with his family in Placer County, California.