The Homemade God

About The Homemade God

With sparkling wit and tender insight, this new novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry reminds us that family is everything, even when it falls apart.

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece.

Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting.

As they try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a waiting game, living under the same roof, forced to confront the buried wounds they have incurred as his children. Though the siblings have always been close, the things they learned that summer—about themselves, their father, and his new wife—will drive them apart before they can reach any understanding of what their father’s legacy truly is. Meanwhile, there’s a new stepmother on the scene. Will she be the force that destroys the family for good?

Wonderfully atmospheric, at heart this is a novel about the bonds of siblinghood—what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to keep them connected.