American Sycamore

Healthcare journalist and novelist Kenney (Leading Through a Pandemic) delivers a compassionate chronicle of three baby boomers who met as Harvard students in the 1970s as they contend with today’s changing world. Rob Barrow, now a law professor at the university, gets embroiled in controversy after he’s misquoted in a Harvard Crimson article about the New York Times’ 1619 Project, allegedly claiming it’s “irrelevant,” which prompts incoming students to wonder if he’ll incorporate racist perspectives into his curriculum. Rob and his wife, Julia, a historian working on a book about the baby boomers, see their lives further upturned when Rob is diagnosed with prostate cancer. A parallel narrative follows the Barrows’ close friend Ray Witter, dean of Harvard’s medical school. A medic during the Vietnam War, Ray remains tormented by memories of the many young soldiers who died in combat, and is concerned now by a discovery he makes of coverups at Harvard’s hospital system involving fatal errors that were never disclosed to patients’ families. Decades earlier, Rob and Julia lost their 11-year-old son to a fever-induced seizure at one of the Harvard-affiliated hospitals. As Ray goes above and beyond to help Rob get the best treatment and Rob fights to restore his reputation on campus, Kenney poignantly underscores the characters’ resilience and the power of friendship. Readers will be moved. (Mar.)