‘Absorbing . . . atmospheric’ – Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall

‘Tense, evocative, page turning’ – Emma Donoghue, author of Room

The sweeping American novel about race, love and family by Stuart Nadler, author of Rooms for Vanishing.

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.

‘Nadler skillfully creates characters whose failures and faults make them comically, endearingly human’ – New Yorker