From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station, The Topeka School is a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century. It follows Adam Gordon, a senior at Topeka High School and a renowned debater; his mother, Jane, a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, an expert at getting ‘lost boys’ to open up; and his fellow senior, Darren, a loner and, unbeknownst to Adam, one of his father’s psychiatric patients. Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is the story of a family: Jane’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgressions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men.