Homeland

In the 1890s, Pauli Kroner leaves Berlin for Chicago and the household of his wealthy uncle, Joe Crown, a German-American brewery magnate who expects obedience from his wife and children. Pauli enters a family divided by money, generation and gender, and must decide whether opportunity in America requires submission to his uncle or the creation of an independent life.

The novel moves through immigrant neighbourhoods, industrial Chicago, the Pullman Strike and the earliest years of motion pictures. Pauli’s fascination with cameras and film offers a new future while the Crown children resist the limits imposed by wealth and respectability. Historical figures including Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and Buffalo Bill connect the family’s private ambitions to a nation being remade by technology, labour conflict and mass entertainment.