Chorus

(Hardback, Main)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'You don't have to go back. You will stay here at home, with me. This is where you belong.'

One afternoon, in a little farmhouse in rural Virginia, the ailing Marie Shaw dies in ambiguous circumstances and nothing is ever the same again for the seven young children she left behind. Spanning from the Great Depression to the burgeoning of US counterculture in 1959, Chorus sensitively traces the divergent paths taken by the grieving Shaw siblings as they grow together and apart over the decades. Henry, Jack, Maeve, Lane, Sam, Wendy and Bette get married and divorced, go to war and give birth to children of their own, break down and pick themselves up again.

Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and of the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home.

Reviews

'As vast, clear, and iconic as only timeless stories are, Kauffman's Chorus is a key: meet the Shaw family and discover, in its infinite and invisible complexity, the universal core of your own.' - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, author of Hex

'Elegantly charts the nuanced connections and fractures between family members ... always illuminating the sweetness and sorrow that exists in even the smallest detail.' - David Connerley Nahm, author of Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky

'Rebecca Kauffman's compact and ingeniously-arranged Chorus depicts the Shaw family and its long-held secrets with admirable clarity ... makes us freshly aware of how the people most dear to us, like the organs of the body, are hidden simply by virtue of being so vital and so close.' - Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief

'Chorus is an intimate, affecting, and exquisite portrait of an American family that feels as real as any I've ever known ... I loved it.' - Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints

'A story about love and its resilience, how much we really know about our own family and what binds them together even against seemingly insurmountable odds.' - Good Housekeeping March 2022 Book Club pick

Author Bio

Rebecca Kauffman is originally from rural Ohio. She studied Classical Violin Performance at the Manhattan School of Music before receiving an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. Her previous novels are Another Place You've Never Been, The Gunners and The House on Fripp Island. She currently lives in Virginia.