The Nix

A humorous and very moving first book about a boy, his mother who abandoned him when he was a little boy, and how his quest to learn the details of her life ultimately helps him take back his own.

Introducing Samuel Andresen-Anderson: a frustrated writer, an infatuated college lecturer, and a compulsive online gamer. Since Faye left when he was a little kid, he hasn't seen his mother. However, one day she appears on the news, hurling rocks at a presidential contender. Although Faye is portrayed in the media as a radical militant with a scandalous history, Samuel is aware that his mother never left her little Iowa town. Which is the real version of his mother? In an attempt to explain the mystery and at last provide his publisher with something, Samuel chooses to take advantage of his mother's recent notoriety by writing a candid biography that would publicly disparage her in-depth. He has to find her first, however, and then he needs to speak with her without crying.

Once Samuel starts digging into her past, the story takes him from the 1960s rural Midwest to New York City during the Great Recession and Occupy Wall Street, then to the notorious 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention riots, and lastly to Norway, the home of the enigmatic Nix that his mother told him stories about when he was a young boy. Samuel will also unanticipatedly discover at these locations that he must reconsider everything he ever believed to be true about his mother—a lady who had a remarkable life that she chose to keep a secret.