On Thanksgiving Day 2007, as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone's life.

In her gripping new book, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of this complex cast of characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families. "Strangers at the Feast "is at once a heartbreaking portrait of a family struggling to find happiness and an exploration of the hidden costs of the American dream.

Published to international acclaim, Jennifer Vanderbes's first book, "Easter Island, "was hailed as "one of those rare novels that appeals equally to heart, mind, and soul," by the "San Francisco Chronicle." In her second novel, this powerful writer reaches new heights of storytelling. This page-turner wrestles with the most important issues of our time--race, class, and above all else, family. "Strangers at the Feast "will leave readers haunted and deeply affected.

On Christmas day in 1956, a woman gave birth to a baby girl without ears. She was the first living victim of the notorious Thalidomide epidemic, of which there would go on to be over 10,000 more in forty-six countries across the world. By the time Frances Kelsey received the New Drug Application at the Food and Drug Administration, pregnant women had been taking Thalidomide for almost three years to cure nausea and insomnia, and sales had soared into the millions. Yet Kelsey was sceptical about the potential toxicity of this this 'wonder drug,' and so began a fastidious nineteen-month-long battle to block its approval. A tale of recklessness and greed, courage and heroism, The Gatekeeper is as timely now as it was sensational then. It documents a dramatic moment in history when countless lives were saved - not by governing bodies and elected officials, but by a lone female scientist who fought against powerful interests to expose the truth and prevent such a tragedy from ever recurring. The story of Thalidomide marks a key turning point in the $1 trillion industry that still underpins our lives today and is emblematic of the seemingly endless battle between corporation and consumer protection.

In this extraordinary fiction debut--rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion--two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.
It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home.
Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island's ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband.
A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island's haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever.
Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.

"From the Hardcover edition."