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The O'Briens

About the Book

The O'Briens

THE O'BRIENS is a family story unlike any you have read, a tale that pours straight from the heart of a splendid, tragic, ambitious clan. In Joe O'Brien—backwoods boy, railroad magnate, patriarch, brooding soul—Peter Behrens gives us a fiercely compelling character who exchanges isolation and poverty in the Canadian wilds for a share in the dazzling possibilities and consuming sorrows of the twentieth century. When Joe meets Iseult Wilkins in Venice-by-the-Sea, California, the story of their courtship—told in Behrens's gorgeous, honed style—becomes the first movement in a symphony of the generations. The O'Briens is the story of a marriage and a family moving through history—from the first flying machines, through two world wars, to the election of JFK--told with epic precision and wondrous imagination.

 

The O'Briens
by Peter Behrens

  • Publication Date: March 6, 2012
  • Genres: Literary Fiction
  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Pantheon
  • ISBN-10: 0307379930
  • ISBN-13: 9780307379931