The Sins of the Children: A Novel

Oxford, 1907. Peter Guthrie arrives at St. John's College as the embodiment of American optimism: a Rhodes scholar,Athlete, and genuinely decent young man who believes life rewards the sincere. After two years away, his family descends for a visit, and Peter couldn't be happier. But beneath the quad's ancient stones and the promise of young love with the charming Betty Townsend, something festers. His friend Nicholas Kenyon, world-weary before his time, watches with dark amusement as Peter's golden ideals collide with the messy compromises of adult life. What begins as a jaunty tale of university friendship and first love gradually reveals its teeth: the title isn't decorative. Hamilton asks what happens when children discover their parents are not the people they believed, when ambition curdles into something more sinister, when the sins of one generation bleed into the next. It's a sharply observed novel about the moment innocence meets reality and must decide whether to break or bend.