The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Like A Far-flung Life, Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves explores sprawling consequences that unfold from a single event: In this case, the 1911 massacre of a white family outside the town of Pluto, North Dakota, which spurs a mob of local white men to incorrectly blame and lynch the Metis men who discovered the crime scene and rescued the sole survivor, a baby girl. With lush prose and a host of memorable narrators, Erdrich depicts a community indelibly marked by injustice as far back as its very founding, when it was built on land rightfully belonging to the local Metis reservation.
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Those who appreciate Stedman’s depictions of Australia’s harsh, arid outback and the hardscrabble sheep station life shouldn’t miss Colleen McCullough’s 1977 classic, The Thorn Birds, which has mesmerized generations of audiences. McCullough’s steamy melodrama follows one family—and a forbidden love—across more than 40 years. It’s a true epic, with enough action and taboo-breaking to give today’s dark romance authors a run for their money.
Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven
Michelle Huneven’s sixth novel is her best yet, and like A Far-flung Life, Bug Hollow has a family tragedy at its pumping heart. The Samuelsons are devastated when eldest son Ellis dies in a shocking accident. Their grief is shared with Ellis’ girlfriend, Julia, who reveals that she is pregnant with his child. They decide to adopt the baby, Eva, and we follow the complicated, grief-marked lives of the resulting family of five over the following four decades. Like M.L. Stedman, Huneven lets her characters be realistically flawed, and shows great compassion for their foibles and mistakes—making this sensitive novel even more moving.
Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
If you’re craving another complex family saga, Nobel Laureate Mo Yan’s inimitable Red Sorghum delivers in spades. Visceral and dazzling, this intense epic follows three generations through the tumult of 20th-century China, from the warlord-ruled 1920s, to the brutal Japanese invasion, to the ensuing Chinese Civil War. The vast spectrum of human experience—tragedy and comedy, romance and loss, sacrifice and vengeance—plays out against the unforgettable rural landscape of northeast Gaomi Township, where fields of sorghum brim with sly bandits, passionate lovers, cruel soldiers and brave rebels. If ever a novel succeeded in capturing the unparalleled scale of chaos and change undergone by modern China, it’s this one.
Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller
In Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm, the beautiful and unyielding setting for a family’s challenges is cold, rocky and forbidding western Iceland. Orri’s parents struggle to get by as cattle farmers, and lately, the intensity and isolation of their way of life seems to be wearing on Orri’s reserved father. A leave from college in Reykjavik brings Orri back to the farm to help, where he faces the quintessential questions involved in coming of age: How do I relate to my parents as an adult? What should I risk in the pursuit of love? And, most importantly, what is the life I’m meant to live?
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
On the eve of World War II, two Hungarian Jewish brothers are on the verge of new beginnings—architecture school for Andras, med school for Tibor. It’s no surprise that their plans are upended when Hitler seizes power, but the rest of Julie Orringer’s debut novel is far from expected. In Vichy France, Andras falls in love with an enigmatic dance instructor whose family hides a dangerous secret history. As both families’ fates unfurl, Orringer’s meticulous research brings the era to life in arresting detail. The Invisible Bridge is about trying to survive a cataclysmic war and genocide. As in Stedman’s novels, themes of morality, forgiveness and grief are at play. But this is also an almost-unbearably tender novel about the sustaining power of sibling love.
