The Most Compelling Family Sagas Modern Fiction Has to Offer

This tale of siblings confronting family legacy from their childhood home was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Danny and Maeve Conroy were raised in a grand Pennsylvania mansion known as the Dutch House. Their emotionally distant father remarried and brought step-siblings into the home, but as the decades pass, Danny and Maeve struggle with careers, money, and their own families. Everyone and everything changes, except for the house, which stands tall as a reminder of what once was.

Korean-American author Min Jin Lee went epic with her historical novel about a Korean family who immigrates to Japan (it was also adapted into an excellent series for Apple TV+.)

Sunja is pursued by a wealthy fisherman but left pregnant and abandoned when she refuses to be his mistress. She marries a Christian minister and moves to Osaka to begin life anew, but following the annexation of Korea by Japan, anti-Korean sentiment is rife and discrimination comes to define the next six decades of her and her descendants' lives.

Born in Chile and inspired by her family, Isabel Allende’s bestselling work led to her being celebrated as one of the defining authors of the magical realism genre.

Clara del Valle, the youngest daughter in her family, has a psychic vision that an accidental death will occur in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is killed by poison. Rosa's fiancé, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, ends up falling for Clara. So begins the tale of three generations of Clara's lineage, a family touched by magic and the spirit of revolution.

Inspired by a trip to Ghana, where she was born, Yaa Gyasi wrote this startling debut novel about a family's dual journeys across generations.

Effia and Esi are half-sisters raised together in a small village where hopes for their future are low. Effia is married off to a British merchant while Esi ends up held captive in the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle, which Effia's husband rules over as governor. Homegoing follows both women's lineages, divided by race, class, and colonialism's insidious power.

The hugely prolific author (and full-time social media icon) Joyce Carol Oates reached a new level of recognition in 2001 when her 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.

Michael and Corinne Mulvaney are the parents of four children: Michael Jr., Patrick, Marianne, and Judd. Their seemingly idyllic upper-middle class life on the family farm in upstate New York slowly falls apart after Marianne goes to her high school prom and is attacked by a classmate whose father is a friend of Michael. As her dad falls into alcoholism and their family reputation disintegrates in the aftermath, Marianne is forced to grapple with how her life has sparked such seismic change among those she loves.

Another Oprah Book Club choice, this ambitious debut novel from the poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is over 800 pages long but worth every single one of them!

Tracing the multiple generations of the Garfield family, the book depicts an African-American family, the Garfields, from the days before slavery and through to the present. The novel's protagonist is Ailey Pearl Garfield, torn between following tradition to become a doctor and chasing her dreams as a historian. Through her education and her family's story, she delves into her origins and their journeys from emancipation to civil rights and beyond.