Amherst Reads Discussion

Schroder: A Novel by Amity Gaige (Twelve Hardcover and E-Book; February 5, 2013) recounts the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.  This lyrical and affecting novel is, in the words of Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, “compelling and unique. Gaige’s writing speaks to the complexity of human nature in an elegant, truthful way.”

Gaige, who won the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” Award in 2006, has crafted a novel that, to quote Twelve Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Cary Goldstein from his letter to booksellers about Schroder, “marks a great leap forward for Amity that I’m confident will catapult her into the ranks of today’s top novelists….For me, Schroder accomplishes what the best fiction should. Whether I was publishing Schroder or not, it’s a book I’d want on my shelf at home.”

Schroder is a sweeping, deftly imagined exploration of the identities we take on in our lives, those we are born with, and those we construct for ourselves.