Two generations of the Czabeks—Wally, Susan and their seven kids—make for a nuanced study of the American family and the mysteries of marriage in this dense, heartfelt saga. With Wally and Susan's son Emil narrating, Hribal (The Clouds of Memphis
) takes readers on a 50-year quest for the American dream, from a goofy televised postwar marriage ceremony through the Czabeks' flight in the 1960s from suburban Chicago to a 99-acre Wisconsin farm ("We had gone bucolic by the time the decade really exploded") to a 50th-anniversary gathering that serves as a crucible for decades of accumulated family conflict. The Czabeks persevere through one misadventure after another; Wally pursues get-rich-quick schemes and drowns his demons in drink while each family member seeks his or her own private ways to cope with life's contradictions. Hribal chronicles the lives of this sprawling, chaotic cast of characters with a level of minutiae that tends to lessen the narrative's sense of urgency, but he courageously doesn't stint in his efforts to answer the big questions he poses, even though we may have guessed some of the answers ourselves. Agent, Nat Sobel
. (May)
