An epic novel about family secrets and the consequences of ambition

William Friedrich, an ambitious professor of psychology at Yale in 1952, has stumbled upon a drug that promises happiness—and that can make him a famous man. When his experiment goes awry, and a research subject commits murder, the consequences will haunt him and his family forever.

Pharmakon is an epic novel, an invocation of the quest for bliss, for love, for family, and all of the betrayals that follow. We follow the Friedrichs from the well-ordered suburban life of postwar America through the chaos and freedom of the counterculture, into the drug-fueled, media-crazed eighties and beyond. In William Friedrich, Wittenborn has defined the archetypal American patriarch: a miracle worker and source of strength to everyone except those he loves the most. Pharmakon is also a layered, thoughtful search behind the veil of psychopharmacology as we know it today—a tale not only of the consequences of research, but also of the complex personalities, appetites, and struggles that created it.

Honest, insightful, and ruefully funny, Pharmakon captures formative moments of the twentieth century, the quirks of an American family, and will enthrall fans of the novels of John Irving....

Unabridged CDs • 12 CDs, 15 hours

A novel of scientific experimentation gone wrong and the consequences that haunt a family for a generation....

An honest, insightful , and ruefully funny look at the fate of one American family vis-à-vis the rise of modern psychopharmacology, Pharmakon, or The Story of a Happy Family is nothing less than a contemporary epic. The novel follows William Friedrich, an ambitious professor of psychology at Yale in the early 1950s, who has stumbled upon a drug that promises happiness to those who ingest it and fame and fortune to the man who can synthesize it. But when a brilliant and troubled research subject commits murder, the consequences will haunt Friedrich and his family for years to come....