Purity

Pip Tyler, a 23-year-old woman in Oakland, California, is drowning in $130,000 of student debt, stuck in a pointless sales job at Renewable Solutions, and trapped in a suffocating relationship with her single mother, who lives in a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her mother, who goes by Penelope Tyler, refuses to reveal her real identity, Pip's father's name, or any detail of her past. When Pip was 11, her mother told her a story about fleeing an abusive husband, but the story closely resembled a published memoir, and Pip has never determined whether it is true. Her absent father is the only person who theoretically owes her money, but her mother will never surrender this information.

Pip lives rent-free in a squatter house owned by Dreyfuss, a man with schizophrenia whose property is in foreclosure. Her housemates include Stephen, a former activist with the Catholic Worker, a Catholic social-justice movement, with whom Pip is secretly in love, and Ramón, a man with a developmental disability whom Stephen and his wife, Marie, have adopted. When Marie leaves Stephen and takes Ramón, Pip confesses her feelings. Stephen tells her he sees her as a daughter figure. Humiliated, she strips off her sweater and bra to force his attention, but he pushes her away.

Around this time, Annagret, a German peace activist staying in the house, introduces Pip to the Sunlight Project, an international leak organization run by Andreas Wolf. A psychological questionnaire probes Pip's distrust and her obsession with her mother's secrets, and Annagret suggests the Project could help Pip find her father. After the disaster with Stephen, Pip begins a flirtatious email correspondence with Wolf. Emboldened, she quits her job and tells her horrified mother she is going to South America.

The narrative shifts to Andreas Wolf's origins in 1980s East Berlin. The son of a high-ranking Communist official and Katya, a brilliant but unstable English professor, Andreas grows up in privilege before sabotaging his position with acrostic poems that mock socialism and allude to his mother's sexual transgressions. Expelled from university and disowned by his parents, he retreats to the basement of a church rectory, where he spends years counseling troubled teenagers.

In 1987, a 15-year-old girl named Annagret begins coming to the church and reveals that her stepfather, Horst, an informant for the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, has been sexually abusing her. Andreas falls in love with Annagret, and together they plan Horst's murder. Annagret lures him to the Wolf family's dacha, a lakeside country house, where Andreas kills him with a shovel and buries the body. Andreas hypothesizes that the Stasi investigated but suppressed the case to protect his powerful family. He and Annagret agree not to see each other.

As the Berlin Wall falls two years later, Andreas fears the Stasi's collapse will expose his crime. His father uses his remaining influence to arrange access to the investigation files. During the citizens' storming of Stasi headquarters, Andreas steals his files and improvises a televised speech about sunlight and transparency, launching his career as a famous dissident.

That same night, Andreas meets Tom Aberant, an American journalist who has recently buried his mother in Germany and feels newly liberated, though he remains trapped in a miserable marriage. They form an intense bond. Andreas confesses to the murder, framing it as self-defense, and Tom volunteers to help move the buried remains to a remote location. Afterward, however, Andreas runs back to the grave and appears to defile it. Shaken, Tom flees to New York and keeps his distance permanently.

The novel introduces Leila Helou, a veteran investigative journalist and Tom's longtime partner. She works at Denver Independent (DI), the nonprofit news service Tom founded with money bequeathed by the father of Anabel Laird, Tom's vanished ex-wife. Leila is pursuing a major story about a stolen thermonuclear warhead tied to a military officer's scheme involving a Mexican cartel.

Pip arrives at DI as a research intern, sent by Andreas. Using facial-recognition software, Andreas has discovered that Pip is Tom's biological daughter by Anabel and has instructed Pip to install spyware on DI's computers. Leila develops a maternal attachment to Pip, and Tom invites Pip to live in their house. When Tom tells Leila he believes Pip is his daughter, Leila is devastated, feeling that his real life with Anabel has returned to claim him.

Embedded in the novel is Tom's private memoir, stored on his computer as "a river of meat.doc." It recounts his mother Clelia's flight from East Germany in 1954 and his courtship by Anabel, a fiercely moral art student and heir to the McCaskill agribusiness fortune who renounces her family's money. Their marriage becomes a prison of codependency. After Tom returns from Berlin, he asks for a divorce. Anabel vanishes, mailing her father a note saying she is "dead" to him. Years later, her father dies and leaves Tom $20 million for a news nonprofit while creating a trust worth nearly a billion dollars in Anabel's name.

Meanwhile, Andreas's post-reunification life unravels. He identifies within himself a force he calls "the Killer," a drive of obsessive jealousy and violent fantasy. He becomes addicted to Internet pornography and founds the Sunlight Project, disintegrating privately even as his public profile grows. Before sending Pip to Denver, he meets her at the Project's compound in Bolivia, Los Volcanes. Pip feels alienated by the other interns, all privileged and devoted to Andreas. He confesses the murder and asks her to spy on Tom. In a hotel room, he seduces her, but something about him repels her and she flees.

When DI's IT manager discovers the spyware, Tom confronts Pip. She confesses everything but cannot bring herself to name Andreas. Tom fires her. Andreas, now consumed by paranoia, is bedridden at Los Volcanes when Tom arrives to confront him. Andreas reveals he has already emailed Tom's memoir to Pip's mother. He leads Tom to a high pinnacle, taunts him, writes a murder confession on his own arm, and begs Tom to push him off the cliff. Tom refuses. Andreas walks to the edge and jumps.

Back in Oakland, Pip reads the memoir and discovers her mother's true identity as Anabel Laird, that Tom is her father, and that a billion-dollar trust exists in her mother's name. She strikes a deal with the trust's administrator, who will buy Dreyfuss's house out of foreclosure if Pip brings her mother into contact with the trust within six months. She reconnects with Jason, a boy she knew from Sunday mornings at Peet's Coffee, and they gradually become a couple.

Pip returns to her mother's cabin for a long-dreaded confrontation. Over several days, she draws out the truth and persuades her mother to accept a modest sum from the trust. Finally, Pip calls Tom and insists he come to California. When Tom arrives, he and Anabel smile at each other despite themselves. Pip leaves them alone, but through the cabin's thin walls, she and Jason hear vicious fighting. Rain pours down, and Pip holds Jason's hand, hoping they can do better than her parents, listening as the rain drowns out the shouting.