DescriptionThe Whole Family is an excerpt of a novel which seeks to explore the ways in which the nuclear family fails everyone inside of it. The work seeks to explore both the ways in which parents are given an impossible task, as both the examples of perfect people and the ones responsible for giving daily care, as well as the equally impossible situation created in which children are asked to step in as caretakers for their parents as they age, despite the realities of their own lives. The novel follows Mark Fulton as he seeks to find a way to help his own father deal with a suicide attempt, both out of genuine care and a feeling of filial devotion. In the background of each of these is an exploration of the American ethos, the ways in which we, as a culture, have ascribed broad value judgments to people from different areas within the country as well as to people of various identities. Mark Fulton seeks to find common ground across these lines, uncomfortably discovering the ways in which he, like all of us, is equally guilty of living by these very distinctions and biases.