Schroder by Amity Gaige is a fascinating novel that probes what it mean to have a name, a past and how things can go so wrong so fast, even with the best of intentions.
Our main character here is Eric Kennedy, formerly Eric Schroder, a naturalized American who escaped from East Germany. There was no scandal following him from Germany, but somehow on arriving in Boston he decided he didn't belong and would assume the Kennedy name. As with any lie, once you've started that ball rolling it's hard to stop. So, overtime, Eric Schroder essentially was Eric Kennedy, even in his own mind.
Years later he meets the woman of his dreams, Laura, and they have an incredibly gifted daughter, Meadow. Things progress in the true fashion of the early stages of the American dream until the Kennedy's begin divorce proceedings. Somewhere along the line Eric became the lesser of the two parents and was allowed only supervised visits with Meadow. This doesn't sit well with him and the two of them go on a road trip to reconnect and escape the truths he will inevitably have to tell.
Eric was/is not a bad father and in his attempts to be present for his daughter he broke the laws of the custody agreement and the story takes off from there.
The narrative is written as a letter from Eric to his estranged wife Laura. During his telling we as readers are challenged with so many conflicting emotions it leaves us exhausted but enthralled all at the same time. Gaige's use of language is so masterful it flows seamlessly from the page into your brain and makes the words almost seem like you wrote them yourself. Schroder is such an honest account of life and emotion without the over exaggerations that tend to weigh other novels down. It explores what it means to be a father, a person with a past, a person who cannot come to terms with their present.
Encompassing the full range of human emotion, Schroder by Amity Gaige is a fulfilling, entertaining, and worthwhile beginning of Summer read.
4 out of 5.
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