We Are the Brennans
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Some secrets you keep from your family. Some secrets you keep for your family.
When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it’s not easy. She deserted them all—and her high school sweetheart - five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions.
Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all of their secrets - secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes - and ultimately find a way forward, together.
In the vein of Maggie O'Farrell and John Boyne, Tracey Lange’s critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, We Are the Brennans, explores the staying power of shame - and the redemptive power of love - in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An errant daughter returns to the fold of her Irish Catholic family in Lange's accomplished debut. Sunday Brennan shocked her closely-knit West Manor, N.Y., family when she left for Southern California five years earlier, and devastated her fiancé, Kale. When her oldest brother, Denny, owner of the family's pub, is notified that Sunday nearly killed herself while driving drunk, he reliably fills his role as anchor to his three siblings and his frail father, Mickey. Denny has his own issues, including a recent separation from his wife, who has taken their young daughter with her. When Sunday returns, her homecoming is tinged with resentment, regret, and buried passion for Kale, who has since gotten married, become a father, and partnered with Denny on a new pub. To open it, Denny's taken a risky loan from "Belfast Billy," a guy the Brennans grew up with who works on the pub reno crew. The untrustworthy Billy's dicey role in the pub's future dovetails with secrets involving Mickey's past and Billy's relationship to the family; all this culminates in the revelation of the reason Sunday fled. Lange's narrative perspectives are keenly realized, and she keeps all of the Brennans sizzling with humanity while they grapple with familial loyalty. Fans of intense family dramas are in for a treat.
