The Peacock Feast

A twentieth-century saga about love, class, and the decisions that shape us from "one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America" (Michael Schaub, NPR).

Now 101 years old, Prudence O'Connor is visited by her estranged brother's granddaughter—and shown a series of mementos that bring a century of family drama back to the surface of her memory. She and her brother spent their early childhood in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in the shadow of the eccentric glass genius Louis C. Tiffany.


Tiffany was a man who liked to have things his way. And when it struck him to claim a portion of beach for his opulent mansion, he blew up a breakwater to redirect the flow of the ocean. And that explosion in June of 1916 sent shockwaves through the lives of Prudence and her family.


Spanning the twentieth century and three continents, The Peacock Feast ricochets from Manhattan to San Francisco, from the decadent mansions of the Tiffany family to the death row of a Texas prison, and from the London consultation room of Anna Freud to a Mendocino commune. Lisa Gornick has written a sweeping family drama, an exploration of the meaning of art and the art of dying, and an illuminating portrait of how our decisions reverberate across time and space.