Familiaris (Oprah's Book Club)

“I’m delighted for us to dive into an epic novel from the tremendously talented best-selling author David Wroblewski with his latest creation ‘Familiaris,’” said Oprah Winfrey. “David takes us on an extraordinary journey that brilliantly interweaves history, philosophy, adventure, and mysticism to explore the meaning of love, friendship and living your life’s true purpose.” – Oprah Winfrey

“By taking us back to the origins of the Sawtelle family, Wroblewski has set a storytelling bonfire as enthralling in its pages as it is illuminating of our fragile and complicated humanity. Familiaris is as expansive and enlightening a saga as has ever been written.” – Tom Hanks, Academy Award–winning actor, bestselling author of The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece and Uncommon Type

 “David Wroblewski is one of the few contemporary authors who can create a world that the reader doesn’t merely visit but fully inhabits. And what a world it is, rich with love and joy and heartbreak. And wonder, especially in the way human and canine form inseparable bonds. It has been a long wait for a new Wroblewski novel. The wait is worth it.” – Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena, In the Valley, and The Caretaker 

“No writer understands the depths of dogs’ natures the way David Wroblewski does, and once again we have a vital, absorbing, and remarkable fiction fueled by this understanding. Familiaris is a rare novel, modest and epic.” – Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author of Secrets of Happiness and Improvement

“Like many readers, I adored The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, with its gripping tale of treachery and the magnificent Sawtelle dogs. Now I adore Familiaris. David Wroblewski is a wonderfully inventive writer; he knows so much—how to test a tractor, how to make a table, how to borrow money, how to see the future—but best of all he is a writer of extraordinary characters, human and canine, who will take up residence in your mind and heart. A dazzling and irresistible novel.” – Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Road from Belhaven and The Flight of Gemma Hardy 

“‘Suppose you could do one impossible thing,’ John Sawtelle says in David Wroblewski’s stunning new novel Familiaris. What would you do? Clearly, what the author would do and has done is write this impossibly wise, impossibly ambitious, impossibly beautiful book.” – Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the North Bath trilogy (Nobody’s Fool, Everybody’s Fool, and Somebody’s Fool)

“Tender, ambitious, fierce, deeply human, and of course wonderfully canine, David Wroblewski’s second novel is an American tour de force. There were moments when reading that I thought of Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, Gilbert, and then just Wroblewski himself. A story spun out over generations, to be read for generations, this is a big brave book that is old fashioned in the very best sense of the word." – Colum McCann, National Book Award winner and author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin 

“Already having drawn comparisons to Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, and Gilbert, with García Márquez added here, Wroblewski earns them all, amply rewarding readers who have been waiting impatiently for fifteen years…This colossus of a book will own you, and you will weep to be freed.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“There are beautiful passages on the bonds between humans and animals and plenty of folksy charm. Fans of the first book will be satisfied.” – Publishers Weekly 

“Spellbinding…This warm, big-hearted novel pays tribute to the joys of curiosity and creation and turns out to be surprisingly funny, even as storm clouds gather on the family’s horizon.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune

If you’ve read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, you know that no one writes about dogs with more insight than Wroblewski…This great American novel bustles with life, and if it takes all summer to read it, who cares.” – Newsday