From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At the start of Groff's lyrical debut, 28-year-old Wilhelmina Willie
Upton returns to her picturesque hometown of Templeton, N.Y., after a disastrous affair with her graduate school professor
during an archeological dig in Alaska. In Templeton, Willie's shocked to find that her once-bohemian mother, Vi, has found
religion. Vi also reveals to Willie that her father wasn't a nameless hippie from Vi's commune days, but a man living in Templeton.
With only the scantiest of clues from Vi, Willie is determined to untangle the roots of the town's greatest families and discover
her father's identity. Brilliantly incorporating accounts from generations of Templetonians—as well as characters borrowed
from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, who named an upstate New York town Templeton in The Pioneers—Groff paints
a rich picture of Willie's current predicaments and those of her ancestors. Readers will delight in Willie's sharp wit and
Groff's creation of an entire world, complete with a lake monster and illegitimate children.