The Nix

by Nathan Hill · 2016

In 2011, stalled writer and professor Samuel Andresen‑Anderson is thrust back into his past when his estranged mother, Faye, reappears after decades of absence, accused of a bizarre crime that dominates the news cycle. The media paints her as a radical hippie, but Samuel remembers a modest girl who left his childhood behind. Determined to help her, he embarks on a sprawling quest that unravels family secrets stretching from the American Midwest to 1968 Chicago riots and back to a mysterious Norwegian lineage known as the Nix. Along the way, Samuel confronts the tangled politics of a divided nation, the ghosts of his own lost love, and the fierce tenderness that binds home and identity. Nathan Hill’s audacious, sharply humorous novel weaves a mother‑son psychodrama with a tragicomic look at love, loss, and the resilience of family across generations.