Wise Men

Stuart Nadler

10 April 2014
9781447202462
256 pages

Synopsis

Hilton Wise is the son of one of the most powerful and wealthy lawyers in the United States. When he falls for Savannah, a young black girl he meets on Cape Cod during the summer of 1952, he has no idea that his passion for her will lead to the exposure of his father’s deepest secrets. The result will shatter his family, and hers.

Years later, unable to forget, Hilton abandons his comfortable life on the east coast and sets out to find Savannah. But as he struggles to right the wrongs he set in motion he comes to realize that forgiveness doesn’t have a price.

Set in the last half of the twentieth century, years that changed America for ever, Wise Men is a sweeping story about love and regret, about the crushing weight of familial obligation, and about the difficulty of doing the right thing in an unjust world.

‘It’s an absorbing, well-crafted book, with all the story-telling virtues on display. It is atmospheric, thoughtful and mature, with characters whose fate arouses genuine curiosity. It is fiction of great integrity and vast promise.’ Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
‘Nadler skillfully creates characters whose failures and faults make them comically, endearingly human’ New Yorker
‘Funny and tragic and old-fashioned and brand-spanking new, all at once’ Oprah Magazine