The Nix

It is 2011. Samuel Andresen-Anderson has not seen his mother for 

decades. Faye disappeared, abandoning the family when he was 

young.

She appears once again after committing a crime that garners the 

public attention in the nightly news and causing heated discussion 

in a politically divided country.

Faye is deemed a radical by the media, but to Samuel, his mother 

was an ordinary woman who married her high school sweetheart.

Who is Faye really? Which persona is the actual Faye, the person in 

the news, or the mother he remembers when he was only a boy?

Released in 2016, The Nix seemed to be THE GREAT AMERICAN novel 

that tries to capture what America is about through a look at politics,

pop culture, and the changes that occurred in the post-war period 

and during the Cold War that has shaped American society.

I waited a long time to finally get around to this novel, and it seems 

such a strange time to read it, with the US government making the 

decisions being made that will again change history as it is already a

quarter-century in the new millennia.

Originally Published on January 8, 2026