The Best We Could Hope For Summary, Characters and Themes
The Best We Could Hope For by Nicola Kraus is a deeply moving exploration of family life across generations, revealing how past traumas, secrets, and societal pressures shape identity and relationships. The story follows Jayne Linden and her complex family history from mid-20th century Maryland to contemporary struggles in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Through the lives of Jayne, her children, and extended family, the book examines the challenges of motherhood, marriage, and survival amid fractured bonds, abuse, and conflicting values. It is a careful study of how people cope with disappointment, loss, and the hope for healing while confronting the legacies they inherit.
Summary
The story opens with Jayne Linden reflecting on her life and family legacy, emphasizing how choices—big and small—have defined her path, often leaving unresolved issues for her daughter to face. The narrative then moves back to Jayne’s childhood in 1943 Cherry Hill, Maryland, where family tensions surface early.
Jayne’s mother, Margaret, is active in wartime community efforts but also preoccupied with social standing, while Jayne’s unruly half-brothers and her own place in the family create a challenging environment.
By the late 1950s, Jayne is at Radcliffe College, trying to reconcile her rural, troubled upbringing with the affluent world she now inhabits. She conceals the harsher realities of her family: her brothers are fugitives after legal trouble, and her sister Bunny has vanished.
Bunny’s disappearance remains a painful mystery, compounded by Margaret’s insistence that Bunny left voluntarily. Later, Bunny’s letters reveal she is living on a Georgia farm committed to racial equality, far from their conservative origins, though these letters grow increasingly unstable.
In the early 1960s, Jayne moves between Cambridge and New York, where she meets Rodger Donoghue, a journalist from a working-class background. Their relationship develops amid Jayne’s struggle with class identity, ambition, and societal expectations for women.
Marriage brings new complexities: Rodger’s professional struggles, Jayne’s domestic pressures, and the challenge of balancing motherhood with personal aspirations.
The late 1960s and early 1970s bring further upheaval when Bunny returns pregnant and worn from her activist lifestyle. Jayne takes in Bunny and her children, expanding her family responsibilities.
This deepens Jayne’s sense of purpose but also intensifies the pressures she faces as she manages a growing household and confronts her parents’ disapproval, particularly regarding Bunny’s mixed-race children.
Throughout this period, Rodger’s career ascends while Jayne’s work remains largely invisible, highlighting tensions around gender roles and recognition. Jayne struggles to maintain family stability amid estrangement and social prejudice, finding moments of quiet strength in caregiving and household management.
The story closes on a note of unresolved tension, with Jayne balancing identity, love, and legacy against shifting social expectations.
Moving into the late 1970s and 1980s, the focus shifts to the unraveling of Jayne and Rodger’s marriage in Manhattan. Rodger, despite his public success as a writer and academic, grows emotionally distant, creating a chasm between himself and Jayne.
The couple’s marriage, assumed to be easy, reveals deep conflicts, including miscarriages and clashing views on family and time.
Complications arise with the return of Barbara Galicky, Jayne’s older sister and Rodger’s former lover. Barbara’s reappearance disrupts family life, stirring old wounds.
Rodger’s affair with Barbara fractures his marriage further, leading Jayne to file for divorce and custody amid a bitter legal battle. Disturbing allegations emerge, including Rodger’s inappropriate closeness to their daughter Linden, prompting Jayne to seek sole custody for Linden’s protection.
The custody dispute exposes the family’s fractured reality and deeply affects Linden, who experiences alienation, bullying, and emotional turmoil. She tries to find stability through school, friendships, and her fascination with MTV, but the public scandal and family discord weigh heavily on her.
Jayne eventually remarries Brock Haniman, a wealthy businessman, introducing a new chapter that contrasts sharply with her previous life. Her children adapt in different ways: Sage moves in with Barbara, Huck rebels, and Brian remains distant.
Jayne’s focus remains on protecting Linden while navigating the constraints imposed by social and legal systems.
The narrative then centers on Linden Donoghue, who faces her own complex struggles with family trauma. As a teenager, Linden experiences an inappropriate relationship with her stepbrother Justin, a connection marked by secrecy and shame.
Following Justin’s departure, Linden battles emotional instability and disordered eating, using control over her body to manage inner chaos.
As an adult, Linden becomes a successful artist, creating dark dioramas that reflect her psychological state. She wrestles with memories of abuse by her father Rodger, confronting these through therapy.
When her brother publicly revisits the abuse allegations online, Linden faces renewed family scandal and media attention. Rodger publicly denies the claims, intensifying her pain but also prompting her to assert control over her story.
Parallel to Linden’s narrative is Sage’s life, characterized by stability, motherhood, and caregiving. The sisters’ interactions reveal contrasts in their coping and healing.
Linden reconnects with Justin briefly, but their relationship ultimately collapses under the weight of their unresolved past.
Linden also confronts the complex legacy of their mother Jayne, whose emotionally rigid and judgmental nature has shaped much of their family history. Linden and Sage revisit their childhood summer home, now dilapidated, as a symbol of lost innocence and fractured memories.
Following Jayne’s death, the siblings sift through her belongings, uncovering hidden family histories and confronting past traumas. Linden’s reflections highlight the mixed emotions of betrayal, love, and confusion that define her family experience.
The story closes with Linden beginning to find new meaning and hope. She embraces resilience and the possibility of healing, symbolized by her daughter’s innocent words and her own whispered acceptance of love and connection.
The ending suggests a fragile but growing reconciliation with the past and a tentative step toward a more stable future.
This account reveals a complex family saga, focusing on the impact of trauma, identity, and the often painful quest for understanding and healing across generations. It explores the roles of memory, silence, and love in shaping the paths individuals take and the legacies they leave behind.
Characters
Jayne Linden
Jayne Linden is a deeply reflective and complex woman whose life is marked by a profound tension between her past and present. Throughout her story, she emerges as a figure shaped by the weight of family history, social expectations, and personal sacrifice.
Raised in a conservative, judgmental community, Jayne’s early experiences are colored by embarrassment, loss, and a fractured family dynamic, including the mysterious disappearance of her sister Bunny and the misbehavior of her half-brothers. As she transitions from rural Maryland to the elite world of Radcliffe, Jayne carefully crafts a facade of affluence and stability, hiding the more painful truths beneath.
Her marriage to Rodger Donoghue introduces further complexity, as she negotiates her identity amidst class differences, gender roles, and emotional strain. Jayne embodies the invisible labor and quiet endurance of women balancing family, ambition, and social expectations.
Her role as caretaker to Bunny’s children later in life highlights her capacity for resilience and compassion, even as she struggles with unresolved tensions, particularly regarding race and family estrangement. Jayne’s emotional rigidity, especially in relation to her daughter Linden and her sister Bunny, underscores the intergenerational impact of secrets, judgment, and sacrifice.
Rodger Donoghue
Rodger Donoghue is portrayed as an ambitious and intellectually engaged man whose outward success masks deep personal failings and emotional absence. Originating from a working-class background, Rodger’s rise to become a respected journalist and academic contrasts with Jayne’s more constrained life, creating tension in their marriage.
His relentless drive and lack of emotional availability contribute to a growing rift, revealing underlying differences in values and expectations about family, time, and intimacy. Rodger’s affair with Barbara Galicky, Jayne’s sister and his former lover, shatters the family further and triggers a bitter custody battle, exposing troubling aspects of his behavior, including inappropriate emotional closeness with his daughter Linden.
His denial of abuse allegations and public posturing illustrate his complex, often destructive relationship with his family. Rodger’s character embodies the struggles of masculinity, power, and vulnerability, presenting a figure whose ambitions and failings leave deep scars on those closest to him.
Linden (Lin) Donoghue
Linden Donoghue, Jayne and Rodger’s daughter, is a deeply troubled and multifaceted character whose journey from adolescence into adulthood reveals the heavy toll of family trauma and secrecy. Lin’s story is marked by intense emotional pain, complicated by an inappropriate and secretive relationship with her stepbrother Justin, which intertwines themes of shame, alienation, and forbidden desire.
As a teenager, she experiences drug use, expulsion from school, and the destabilizing effects of her fractured family. Yet Lin also emerges as a gifted artist whose dark, provocative dioramas symbolize her attempt to impose order on the chaos of her life.
Her psychological journey, including therapy to confront memories of sexual abuse by her father, highlights her struggle for identity and healing amidst denial and public scandal. Lin’s relationship with Justin in adulthood reignites old wounds, forcing her to confront the complexities of love, trauma, and boundaries.
Despite the challenges, Lin’s evolving relationship with her stepsister Sage and her gradual confrontation with her past suggest a tentative movement toward reconciliation and self-understanding. Her story is a poignant exploration of survival, the search for meaning, and the possibility of breaking cycles of pain.
Bunny Linden
Bunny, Jayne’s sister, functions as a symbol of rebellion and escape from the rigid social norms that shape their family. Her mysterious disappearance and later return with children from an unconventional lifestyle and activism mark her as a figure of contrast to Jayne’s more conventional path.
Bunny’s commitment to racial equality and communal living challenges the conservative values of their upbringing and introduces themes of freedom, sacrifice, and social conscience. However, her life is also marked by exhaustion and trauma, underscoring the personal costs of her choices.
Bunny’s complex relationship with Jayne, especially the burdens Jayne assumes in caring for her children, reveals the complicated intersections of family loyalty, resentment, and survival.
Barbara Galicky
Barbara, Jayne’s older sister and Rodger’s former lover, is a disruptive yet pivotal character in the family saga. Her troubled history and return to the family home stir old wounds and force painful confrontations.
Barbara’s presence complicates the dynamics within the household, exacerbating tensions between Jayne and Rodger and impacting their children’s emotional responses. She embodies themes of trauma, estrangement, and the lingering effects of past choices, acting as a catalyst for the family’s slow unraveling and eventual reckoning.
Sage Donoghue
Sage, Rodger and Barbara’s daughter and Lin’s stepsister, represents an emotional and moral counterpoint to Lin. She is nurturing, grounded, and embodies a steadier, more conventional family life that Lin both envies and mistrusts.
Sage’s role as caretaker of Rodger after his stroke and as a mother highlights her stability and compassion, qualities that contrast sharply with Lin’s turbulent existence. Their complex sisterly bond offers a glimpse of solidarity, healing, and alternative paths within the fractured family narrative.
Justin
Justin, Lin’s stepbrother, is a complicated figure whose relationship with Lin is both deeply intimate and painfully taboo. Their connection, forged in adolescence and rekindled briefly in adulthood, explores themes of forbidden desire, secrecy, and emotional dependency.
Justin’s struggles with drug use and his eventual departure mirror the instability and alienation pervasive in the family. Despite the destructive aspects of their relationship, Justin remains a significant presence in Lin’s life, symbolizing both comfort and the enduring weight of their shared trauma.
Huck and Michael
Huck and Michael, Lin’s brothers, provide additional perspectives on the family’s fractured history. Their childhood marked by displacement and struggle, as well as their involvement in running a rehab and wellness center, offer insight into the broader patterns of trauma, resilience, and survival within the Linden family.
Their stories deepen the narrative’s exploration of family legacies and the long-term effects of past wounds.
Brock Haniman
Brock Haniman enters the narrative later as Jayne’s second husband, a wealthy businessman whose presence contrasts sharply with her earlier life. His marriage to Jayne introduces new social and economic dynamics but does not erase the emotional scars from her first marriage.
Brock’s role highlights themes of reinvention, protection, and the complexities of moving forward amid lingering pain.
Themes
Family Legacy and the Burden of the Past
The narrative in The Best We Could Hope For explores how family legacy profoundly shapes individual identity and life choices, often carrying the weight of unresolved trauma, silence, and conflicting memories. The characters grapple with inherited pain—whether from parental actions, societal judgments, or past secrets—and this inheritance frames much of their emotional and psychological landscape.
Jayne’s reflections reveal how decisions made by previous generations ripple forward, influencing her own sense of self and leaving her daughter to confront the consequences. The legacy is not merely a history but a living, often suffocating presence that complicates attempts at personal freedom and happiness.
The fragmentation of the family, the mysterious disappearance of Bunny, and the subsequent reveal of her different path highlight how legacy can diverge and fracture. This theme emphasizes how family history is not just about lineage but also about the emotional burdens passed down, the silences maintained, and the struggles to reconcile love and resentment within the intimate bonds of kinship.
The complex interplay of memory, denial, and revelation forces each character to navigate a terrain where the past is neither fully accessible nor entirely escapable, underscoring the intricate dynamics of inheritance beyond material wealth or status.
Identity and the Conflict Between Appearance and Reality
Throughout the story, characters confront the tension between their public personas and private realities, particularly in the context of social class and personal ambition. Jayne’s experience at Radcliffe epitomizes this tension as she fabricates stories about her family’s affluence to fit into an elite world that is at odds with the instability and dysfunction at home.
The theme examines the effort to construct and maintain identities that satisfy external expectations while concealing the more difficult or shameful truths beneath. This duality extends beyond Jayne’s social navigation to the broader conflict each character faces between who they are, who they want to be, and how they are perceived.
The narrative also interrogates how identity is shaped by the need for acceptance and the fear of rejection—whether it’s Jayne’s mother Margaret’s concern about social judgment, Bunny’s rebellion against conservative roots, or Linden’s struggle with the trauma inflicted by her father and the family’s public scandal. The theme exposes the fragility and performative nature of identity, illustrating how personal histories, social roles, and internal desires clash and coexist uneasily.
Gender Roles, Sacrifice, and Recognition
The story portrays the complex dynamics of gender, particularly the often invisible labor and sacrifices demanded of women within family and society. Jayne’s life, especially during the 1970s, starkly contrasts the public success of her husband Rodger with her own exhaustive and largely unacknowledged work maintaining the household and raising children.
This imbalance highlights societal expectations that place women in caretaking roles without equivalent recognition or reward. Jayne’s endurance and resilience reveal the emotional and physical toll of this imbalance, as well as the societal pressures that confine women’s ambitions and identities.
The theme extends to the tensions between traditional and emerging gender norms, as the characters navigate shifting social landscapes. Bunny’s unconventional life as an activist and communal living contrasts with Jayne’s more conventional path, illustrating different responses to restrictive gender roles.
The theme interrogates the costs of sacrifice and the struggle for acknowledgment, showing how gender shapes experiences of power, agency, and invisibility within family and society.
Trauma, Memory, and the Search for Healing
The narrative confronts the lasting impact of trauma—both individual and collective—and the complicated processes involved in remembering and healing. Linden’s journey is central to this theme, as she wrestles with repressed memories of abuse, the pain of betrayal, and the challenge of reclaiming her narrative amid public scandal.
The story portrays trauma not only as a source of suffering but also as a defining force that influences relationships, identity, and mental health. Therapy, memory work, and the act of storytelling emerge as vital, though difficult, means of grappling with trauma.
The theme also highlights how trauma fractures families, creating rifts that can persist for decades, and how silence or denial compounds suffering. The contrasting experiences of Lin and Sage further illuminate the varied ways trauma manifests and the potential for solidarity and tentative healing through connection and understanding.
Ultimately, the narrative suggests that healing is an ongoing process requiring courage to confront painful truths and the willingness to forge new meanings in the aftermath of loss and violation.
Social Class and Cultural Divides
The story foregrounds social class as a powerful force shaping the characters’ lives and choices, illustrating the tensions between rural conservatism and urban liberalism, working-class backgrounds and elite academic worlds, and progressive ideals versus entrenched prejudices. Jayne’s movement from a small town in Maryland to Radcliffe and later New York embodies these shifts and the difficulties of navigating multiple, sometimes conflicting, cultural spheres.
The narrative shows how class identity influences opportunities, social mobility, and interpersonal relationships. Bunny’s rejection of her conservative upbringing to live in a progressive, racially inclusive community stands in contrast to her family’s traditional values, highlighting the challenges of crossing cultural boundaries.
The racial prejudices and disapproval Bunny faces within her own family underscore the intersection of class and race, complicating notions of belonging and acceptance. The theme illustrates how social class shapes not only external circumstances but also internal conflicts and perceptions of self-worth, underscoring the broader societal structures that influence individual destinies.
The Complexity of Love and Betrayal
The intricate dynamics of love, betrayal, and loyalty run deeply through the characters’ relationships, revealing the ways in which affection and hurt coexist and shape each other. The fraught marriage between Jayne and Rodger, marked by emotional distance, infidelity, and divergent values, captures the painful contradictions that often define intimate relationships.
Rodger’s affair with Barbara and the subsequent custody battles expose the fragility of trust and the devastating effects of betrayal on family cohesion. Linden’s struggle with her father’s abuse complicates notions of love, showing how affection can be entangled with harm, confusion, and longing.
Despite the betrayals, moments of connection and care persist, reflecting the messy reality of human relationships where loyalty, resentment, forgiveness, and protection intermingle. This theme reveals how love is not a simple or unidimensional force but one fraught with contradictions that shape the characters’ emotional lives and decisions.