All the Houses

After her father’s heart attack and subsequent surgery, Helen Atherton returns to her hometown of Washington, D.C., to help take care of him and, perhaps more honestly, herself. She’s been living in Los Angeles, trying to work in Hollywood, slowly spiraling into a depression fueled by hours spent watching C-SPAN—her obsession with politics a holdover from a childhood interrupted by her father’s involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The rest of the world might have forgotten it, but the Atherton family never quite recovered. With sharp, witty, and suspenseful prose, All the Houses reveals their story, as Helen pieces together the political moves that pulled her family apart.