Home of the American Circus (Simon & Schuster, 2025) is the new book by the acclaimed author of The People We Keep. A generational novel that will appeal to readers of Sally Rooney, Home of the American Circus is a story about redemption, breaking generational curses, and the power of family in its truest form.

'Whenever I close my eyes, face to the sun, once my brain gets used to the orange glow behind my eyelids, the movie starts to play.

Always the same one.

Always Aubrey. Chubby fingers, sticky with the melting chocolate shell she insists on pulling off her ice cream to eat first. And I don’t care how much mess I’ll have to clean from my car or how much will never come out. All I care about is Aubrey, her hair blowing in her face, into her ice cream, as we drive along the Muscoot Reservoir in the August sun with the windows down, Smashing Pumpkins playing on the tape deck.

Aubrey messing up the words, earnestly singing about the bravest day she’s ever known.

Aubrey stunned when the ice cream falls off her cone into her lap, and I tell her it’s fine to eat with her hands. She can wipe them on my sleeve, and it’s fine. It’s fine. Who cares about clean shirts? Who cares if her shorts are vanilla now?

My mom does!

Who cares what your mom thinks?

She makes a funny snickering sound when she laughs at me, eyes tearing.

Aubrey squinting when the sun gets low in the sky, and we are almost back to her house, and I promise we can drive around the loop one more time.

Aunt Frey, did you dream about me last night? I dreamed about you.

Yeah, I say, every time I watch this memory in my brain.

That zebra was big.

Very big, I say, because I want Aubrey to believe I’m with her in dreams, so she’ll never have a nightmare and think she’s all alone.

Did you dream about me? I dreamed about you.

Did you dream about me? I dreamed about you.

Did you dream? About me?

Did you dream?

Did you?

I can still see each freckle hatching under the skin of her peeling, sunburned nose, that crooked chocolate-stained smile, the frizzy halo of her windblown hair.

The sun is setting and she’s beautiful.

The sun is setting, and I miss her.

It’s setting and I’m so certain I love her more than life itself. But then the light dims, that orange fades to gray, and I can’t see her anymore.

I’m gone.'

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.

Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.