A “funny and supremely moving”novel about a seven-year-old navigating a world of turmoil by the author of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Harper’s Bazaar). Seven-year-old Scotty Ocean decides that seven is going to be “his year.” But soon after his birthday, his artist-turned-alcoholic mother abandons the family—leaving Scotty and his two older sisters alone with their father. As his perfect year falls apart, Scotty begins to act out during school and takes a series of increasingly wild actions to try to win his mother back—and, when that doesn’t work, to replace her. Funny and deeply affecting, An Ocean in Iowa traces Scotty’s desperate attempt to hold on to his childhood while the foundation of his family disintegrates. As Scotty’s year as a seven-year-old flies by—and the dreaded eight approaches—Peter Hedges explores how Scotty sheds his childhood in a one-eighty of the year he hoped would be so perfect. Beautifully written, and with careful attention to period detail, this compelling coming-of-age novel sets the private turmoil of a disintegrating family against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the turbulent 1960s. “A delightful romp through the age of seven with an endearing character who revels in life’s smallest details.” —The Christian Science Monitor

Recounts the author's transformation from an idealistic, freedom-loving youth to a jaded and financially struggling father of four and how a catastrophic flood helped him to reconnect with the faith and courage of his childhood.

Three days after her twentieth birthday, a young woman who grew up in Germany during World War II crosses the Atlantic to start a new life. Outside Is the Ocean traces Heike’s struggle to find love and happiness in America. After two marriages and a troubled relationship with her son, Heike adopts a disabled child from Russia, a strong-willed girl named Galina, who Heike hopes will give her the affection and companionship she craves. As Galina grows up, Heike’s grasp on reality frays, and she writes a series of letters to the son she thinks has abandoned her forever. It isn’t until Heike’s death that her son finds these letters and realizes how skewed his mother’s perceptions actually were.

"Offers mystery, adventure, and fantasy, as well as reflections on family, time travel, and stories. . . . Many readers will find something here to their liking." – Booklist Oscar Martin was fourteen when he mysteriously disappeared from his Iowa farmhouse in 1914. His sister claimed Oscar had rowed out to sea – but how was that possible? Nearly a century later, when Lucy Martin moves with her parents to that same Iowa farmhouse, she discovers the strange and dangerous Book of Story Beginnings, and soon Oscar himself reappears in a bizarre turn of events that sends the two distant relatives on a perilous journey. From a first-time author comes an intricate, spellbinding fantasy that lures you in and won’t let go.

In a novel with small, note-perfect references of the 1960s, Hedges captures the disruptions in communities and families across the country caused by the Vietnam war.

After being involved in a drunk driving accident in the spring, Paige Sheridan spends the summer in Paris as an au-pair and then returns to her suburban Iowa existence for her senior year of high school, where she begins to wonder if she wants more out life than being popular, having a handsome boyfriend and all the latest clothes, and being a member of the social elite.

The story of a continuing friendship between the people of two nations once at war.