Amazon.com description: Product Description: National Book Award finalist Jean Thompson returns with her highly anticipated novel -- a masterful story that examines the American experience through the varied, intimate perspectives of a Midwestern family across the span of several decades.

The Year We Left Home chronicles the lives of the Ericksons as they come of age from the 1970s to near present day, with all the hallmarks of Thompson's celebrated wit and grace: instantly recognizable characters, piercing insight on ordinary circumstances, and stunning prose. Alternating between several viewpoints as the years pass, it is an unforgettable and subtly provocative portrait of an emblematic American family as they navigate and redefine happiness in the course of their daily lives.