When Eileen Tumulty, raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Queens, meets Ed Leary, a scientist, she thinks she's found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. After they marry, Eileen quickly discovers that Ed doesn't aspire to the same American Dream. Through the Learys, novelist Matthew Thomas charts the story of the American Century: the promise of domestic bliss and economic prosperity that captured hearts and minds after WWII.
A graduate of the University of Chicago, Matthew Thomas has an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. We Are Not Ourselves is his first novel.
Recorded On: Monday, September 22, 2014