#1 New York times bestseller more than one million copies sold a today Show Read with Jenna Book Club PickA New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, Npr, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year and Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth. and The New York Times Book Review and A classic that we will read for years to come. and Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club and A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable. and and dash, Npr The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew.