Golden Age: A Novel

"Jane Smiley’s expansive, cumulatively addictive “Last Hundred Years” trilogy plows through a century of American history and social change as it follows an Iowa farm family from 1920-2019. The Langdons disperse across the country, fight wars overseas, serve in Congress, make and lose bundles on Wall Street, marry and divorce, and suffer the effects of extreme weather. The trilogy’s power lies in the unfolding lives of a Russian novel’s worth of characters who breed and hybridize in unpredictable ways — yet still share a connection, however eroded, to their agrarian roots. Golden Age, with its many deaths and its emphasis on the alarming, far-reaching impact of climate change, leaves some surviving characters wondering whether the golden age is perhaps behind them. The result is a sobering finale to Smiley’s impressive saga."