LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD A stunning, heartbreaking debut — 'We Are Not Ourselves' is both the intimate story of a family and an epic of the American Century. Raised in the 1940s in the mostly Irish neighbourhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, by an alcoholic mother and a union-wage father, Eileen yearns for more from an early age. Driven by this longing, she places her stock and love in a handsome young scientist and with him begins a family. Once her childhood neighbourhood begins to slip below her standards, she pushes against her husband's reluctance to find a home elsewhere. When it becomes clear that his reticence is part of a deeper, more incomprehensible psychological shift, the bricks of the life she thought she was building begin to crumble, and she and her son are left to grapple with a husband and a father who is, beyond their control, fading away. In this heartbreaking debut, Thomas masterfully paints the sprawling portrait of a family that heroically weathers an extraordinary storm. It is wise to the ways in which people happen, over time and with each other.