Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2019
304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
From the author of A Place at the Table and A Soft Place to Land, an "intense, complex, and wholly immersive" (Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author) multigenerational novel that explores the complex relationship between two very different women and the secrets they bequeath to their daughters.
Eve Whalen, privileged child of an old-money Atlanta family, meets Daniella Gold in the fall of 1962, on their first day at Belmont College. Paired as roommates, the two become fast friends. Daniella, raised in Georgetown by a Jewish father and a Methodist mother, has always felt caught between two worlds. But at Belmont, her bond with Eve allows her to finally experience a sense of belonging. That is, until the girls' expanding awareness of the South's systematic injustice forces them to question everything they thought they knew about the world and their places in it.
Eve veers toward radicalism—a choice pragmatic Daniella cannot fathom. After a tragedy, Eve returns to Daniella for help in beginning anew, hoping to shed her past. But the past isn't so easily buried, as Daniella and Eve discover when their daughters are endangered by secrets meant to stay hidden.
Spanning more than thirty years of American history, from the twilight of Kennedy's Camelot to the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency, We Are All Good People Here is "a captivating…meaningful, resonant story" (Emily Giffin, author of All We Ever Wanted) about two flawed but well-meaning women clinging to a lifelong friendship that is tested by the rushing waters of history and their own good intentions.
"White vividly portrays the fractious radicals—such as Eve's arrogant, manipulative lover—dedicated to smashing "bourgeois notions and attitudes" as well as the trajectory that some of those ardent rebels took in the 1970s and '80s. A well-paced narrative palpably evokes America's stormy past." - Kirkus Reviews
"This latest from White is highly recommended for its absorbing characterization and engrossing plot that perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the 1960s. For readers who enjoyed Emma Cline's The Girls or Caroline Leavitt's Cruel Beautiful World." - Library Journal (starred review)
"We Are All Good People Here asks questions like some of us may ask ourselves in these crazy times: Is it possible to separate our political choices and our values? As we grow older and as we evolve, do we ever truly escape our history?" - Bitter Southerner
"White's fascinating window into history held me spellbound...This is a book with serious scope and vision, people by characters so flawed and human you can almost hear them breathing...Intense, complex, and wholly immersive. - Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Almost Sisters
"In Susan Rebecca White's gem of a novel, she weaves together a captivating story of two women who forge a bond as teenagers in the '60s and carry that friendship through a lifetime of social and personal change. This is a meaningful, resonant story about the resilience of friendship, and an artful portrayal of the reckoning when two women's--as well as an entire country's--past finally meets the present. I loved this book." - Emily Giffin, author of All We Ever Wanted
"This is a glimmering mosaic of a book, where tiny, shining pieces from the lives of two women running on parallel courses coalesce to create a stunning picture of a time and place, the fringes of a movement." - Lydia Netzer, author of How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky
This information about We Are All Good People Here was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Rebecca White is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Bound South, A Soft Place to Land, and A Place at the Table. A graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at Hollins University, Susan has taught creative writing at Hollins, Emory, SCAD, and Mercer University, where she was the Ferrol A. Sams, Jr. Distinguished Chair of English Writer-in-Residence. An Atlanta native, Susan lives in Atlanta with her husband and son.
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