Vera, or Faith is a poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale about a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of Vera, their half-Jewish, half-Korean, wholly original 10-year-old daughter.
The Bradford-Shmulkin family love one another deeply, but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There’s Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of 21st-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who’s barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, young Vera.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; for Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love’s survival in this great, mad, imploding world. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James’s classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of the New York Times, “one of his generation’s most exhilarating writers.”
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad and came to the United States seven years later. His award-winning books include Absurdistan, one of the New York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of the Year, Super Sad True Love Story, one of the most iconic novels of the decade; and his memoir, Little Failure, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
TICKET PRICES
Public $25, DMA Member/Educator $20, Student $10
Optional ticket + book bundle pricing
Public $45, DMA Member/Educator $40, Student $35
