“A graceful, attentive, and beautiful debut.” —George Saunders"Gorgeous...Lifelines has everything you'd want in a book." —CosmopolitanNamed a Best Book of the Summer by O Magazine,Cosmopolitan, Nylon, and the Minneapolis Star-TribuneFor fans of Meg Wolitzer and Maggie Shipstead: a sweeping debut novel following an American artist who returns to Germany—where she fell in love and had a child decades earlier—to confront her past at her former mother-in-law’s funeral. It’s 1971 when Louise leaves Oregon for Düsseldorf, a city grappling with its nation’s horrific recent history, to study art.Soon she’s embroiled in a scene dramatically different from the one at home, thanks in large part to Dieter, a mercurial musician. Their romance ignites quickly, but life gets in the way: an unplanned pregnancy, hasty marriage, the tense balance of their creative ambitions, and—finally, fatally—a family secret that shatters Dieter, and drives Louise home.   But in 2008 she’s headed to Dieter’s mother’