The Tender Land: A Family Love Story

An extraordinary memoir of a family haunted by tragedy: “I’ve read very few contemporary novels that can rival Finneran’s nonfiction.” —Jonathan Franzen
A superb portrait of family life, this “absorbing and thoughtful” memoir is a love story unlike any other (Library Journal). The Finnerans—Irish Catholic parents with five children in St. Louis—are a seemingly unexceptional family whose lives are upended by a catastrophic event: the suicide of the author’s fifteen-year-old younger brother after being publicly humiliated in junior high school.

A gentle, handsome boy, Sean Finneran was a straight-A student and gifted athlete, especially treasured by every member of his family. Masterfully, the book interweaves past and present, showing how inseparable the Finnerans are, and how the long accumulation of love and memory helps them survive their terrible loss.

“Unforgettable in its restraint and quiet beauty,” The Tender Land is a testament to the always-complicated ways in which we love one another (Publishers Weekly). In quietly luminous language, Kathleen Finneran renders the emotional, spiritual, and physical terrain of family life—its closeness and disconnection, its intimacy and estrangement—and pays tribute to the love between parents and children, brothers and sisters. In doing so, she “reminds us of how complicated, unique, and fragile an organism the family is” (The Boston Globe).

“[Great writers] change us. Kathleen Finneran fits in this niche. . . . Her prose sings.” —USA Today

“Beautifully written . . . Like life itself, this memoir evokes both sadness and joy.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch