A piercing and compassionate debut novel about the twisting ways in which the young atone for the sins of the old in small town America

Robert Kelly and his wife Irene were a golden couple of the late ‘70s – she an artist, he a businessman, each possessed by a dynamism that seemed to promise them a place in a new and vibrant age. But with two young boys to care for, Irene finds herself confined by the very things she’d dreamed of having, and her painting ambitions atrophy as she struggles to invest meaning into her role as wife and mother. And Robert, pressured by Irene’s demands and haunted by the failure he sees looming, risks the family name and business to pursue a “can’t-miss” real estate scheme.

Twenty years later, their now-grown sons, Nathan and Andrew, return to the Cape of their childhood: Robert is recently out of jail for white-collar crimes, and Irene has received a fateful diagnosis. Drawn back home for what might be a final time, the Kelly sons must lay the ghosts of their family’s past to rest.

In The Outer Cape we revisit the fictional town of Wequaquet, the setting of his debut collection, and see Patrick Dacey’s talent stretch and soar. He delivers a story of four people grappling with the ghost of infinite possibility, a book in which chasing the American dream and struggling to survive are one and the same.