America is at war in Vietnam. And the McMaster family is at war over the war — and much more.

Michael McMaster believes his power-couple parents have grown complacent, forgetting the progressive impulses that once inspired them. His parents — foreign policy mandarin Alan and writer-politico Anna — believe their son is committing the folly of the young, spurning their wisdom on how to bring change to a fundamentally conservative society.

The Unmooring traces Michael’s journey as he rejects his family’s lifestyle, falls in love with Riva Daniels, a talented black actress, and becomes a politically engaged journalist. The journey takes Michael from the front lines of the civil rights struggle to the battlefields of Vietnam and the upheavals of 1968. It is a landscape much like today’s, scarred by polarization, social conflict, official deceit and generational tensions. Michael’s journey challenges his capacity to grasp America’s deep racial fissures and tests the love he and his wife Riva feel for each other — especially when a family tragedy forces Riva to re-examine all the premises of her life.

Through it all, Michael’s parents play key roles in some of the decade’s most crucial events. They watch the arc of their son’s life with sympathy, fear and dismay. As the era closes, both son and father face life-defining choices — and take sharply divergent paths.

Book cover design by Jamie Baylis