When Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga, find a disturbing note among their late father"s papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister unbandage its wounds in the year following their father"s funeral. Erik is a psychiatrist dangerously vulnerable to his patients; Inga is a writer whose late husband, a famous novelist, seems to have concealed a secret life. Interwoven with each new mystery in their lives are discoveries about their father"s youth-poverty, the War, the Depression-that bring new implications to his relationship with his children.