“This is a novel of heartbreak and beauty, presided over by one of the most idiosyncratic and surprising comedic voices I’ve encountered in recent times. Lange’s narrator, the younger of two sisters, is the true joy of Us Fools, speaking directly to the reader in a deceptively casual voice that is witty and allusive and at the same manages to plumb the sadness hidden deep within our quotidian lives. In all, a smashing debut.” —T.C. Boyle, author of Blue Skies and Drop City

“There is something of the end of America in Nora Lange's portrait of a farming family on a wild and anfractuous path to the brink of collapse. At turns hallucinatory and ruminative, fans of Joy Williams will find a familiar in Lange’s sharp-witted prose.” —Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

“Us Fools is one of those special books that reorders the world and makes everything new again — language, family, history, fear, love.  Nora Lange writes with the precision of Joy Williams, and the heart of George Saunders, in a voice that is all her own. You won’t forget this novel.” —Daniel Alarcón, journalist, and author of The King is Always Above the People and War by Candlelight

“Nora Lange’s voice shines in this wonderful debut.” —Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

“With wild dreams and tender considerations, Nora Lange’s Us Fools brings us that bond most tangled, mysterious, eternal and dazzlingly reflective: sisters. As farms and families spin, what center holds when the world lets go?” —Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book and The Seas  

“Midwest farm life in the 1980s gets an inimitable revision through the eyes of the brilliant and unsettling Fareown sisters — filled with insight, sex, and unpredictable action, Lange’s provocative debut dazzles and will be like nothing you’ve read this year.” —J. Ryan Stradal, author of Saturday Night At The Lakeside Supper Club and The Lager Queen Of Minnesota

“Past and present seep and bleed in this assured, richly ruminative, darkly funny debut. With exacting lyricism, Nora Lange chronicles the tumult and chaotic love between two unforgettable sisters. Us Fools is a marvel of brutal wit and wild charm—a brilliant, sweeping  chronicle of a singular American family.” —Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe and Black Light

“Us Fools reimagines the intergenerational family saga as a gobsmacked midwestern modern gothic. This novel is an explosion of ideas and a feast of language—a crazy quilt of bafflement, history, love, and danger—made unforgettable by the central sisters Fareown, whose binary star guides us through the wild heartlands of Nora Lange’s matchless mind.” —Justin Taylor, author of Reboot and Riding with the Ghost

“Nora Lange's remarkably tender and moving Us Fools is a beautiful portrait of the parallel, intersecting, and occasionally derailing tracks of two sisters coming of age in an America as broken as ever. The backdrop is the Eighties Midwest farm crisis though Lange expertly weaves in classic literature, philosophy, and socioeconomics with a graceful touch, never heavy-handed in how she renders this sibling love story also a cautionary tale of all the innate impossibilities of capitalism in a golden age of consumerism. There is a resounding authenticity to Lange's novel that feels almost startling for a book wired mostly quietly. I think anyone who gets lost in these pages will find themselves haunted for life by Lange's truly singular and yet deeply, painfully, intimately American vision.”—Porochista Khakpour, author of Tehrangeles and The Brown Album

“Us Fools is a boisterous, irreverent, and moving novel about two sisters growing up in an America that doesn't much care for them or their midwestern farming family. With comic tenderness and with an unforgettable, ferocious voice, Nora Lange paints a remarkable portrait of connection and alienation, of love and heartbreak, and all points in between.” —Edan Lepucki, author of Time’s Mouth and Mothers Before

“Us Fools by Nora Lange is an epic-sized, gloriously-anarchic, blow-out adventure through recent American history. From the farm crisis of the 80’s and through the intellectual changes crossing into the new millennium, the novel follows the joys and heartbreaks of one farm family as it’s rocked through the wild, political, hilarious, weird, disturbing and occasionally comforting changes in American life. How are we supposed to survive as Americans anyway? Can we? I felt hints of Marilynn Robinson and David Foster Wallace here in this amazing work, and with its smart, rhapsodic language, it feels like Roberto Bolano’s baton has been passed to Nora Lange.” —Robin McLean, author of Get 'Em Young Treat 'Em Tough Tell 'Em Nothing and Pity the Beast

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Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis. 

As Jo and Bernie’s imaginative solutions for escape come up short against their parents’ realities, the family leaves their farm for Chicago, where Joanne—free-spirited, reckless, and unable to tame her inner violence—rebels in increasingly desperate ways. After her worst breakdown yet, Jo goes into exile in Deadhorse, Alaska, and it is up to Bernadette to use all she’s learned from her sister to revive a sense of hope against the backdrop of a failing world. 

With her debut novel Us Fools, forthcoming with Two Dollar Radio (September 17, 2024), Nora Lange has crafted a rambunctious, ambitious, and heart-rending portrait of two idiosyncratic sisters, determined to persevere despite the worst that capitalism and their circumstances has to throw at them.