No Takebacks

Otto Fisher has ADHD. He’s also adopted. At thirteen, he never thought much about where he came from until his seventh-grade teacher at the prestigious St. Michael’s school in New Orleans asks her class to write about an ancestor. Each student must perform their piece in a school play. Otto’s adoptive mother, whom he adores, helps him write about one of her ancestors, who was in the Holocaust.

Otto’s story is the most moving of all—but not for his father, a college English professor who is also a racist and an anti-Semite.

The play triggers a series of conflicts in the Fisher household, culminating in Otto’s father beating his mother. Otto’s older sister, Ada, stops the fight. Then their father moves out. Which leaves Otto torn between the mother and sister he adores and the father he desperately needs. When he goes to visit his father, a series of events forces everyone in the Fisher family to question the meaning of family.

In this funny, bittersweet, poignant and thoroughly engaging short novel, Otto narrates the story of his young life with humor, grace and surprising insight.