Jenna Bush Hager has selected Naomi Krupitsky’s The Family as the latest pick for her Today show book club.

Krupitsky’s novel, her first, follows two young Italian American women growing up in Mafia families in early 20th-century Brooklyn. Their long friendship is threatened when one of their fathers mysteriously disappears.

A critic for Kirkus said the book “lacks the depth of Elena Ferrante’s work, but the story is fast-paced,” and called it “a readable but somewhat shallow story about friendship and loyalty.”

 

On her Instagram account, Hager called Krupitsky’s novel “a story that will leave you craving Sunday night dinners, [and] brings 1930s and 1940s Brooklyn to life!”

Krupitsky told Today that a theme of her novel is a “sense of play between opposites.”

“The characters in the book are really violent, but you really love them,” she said. “The girls are really sort of polar opposites, but they find strength in each other, and that sort of refusal to see anything as black and white really informed me when I was writing."

On Twitter, Krupitsky reacted to her book’s selection for the Today club, writing that “as grateful as I am for this incredible honor, I am almost equally grateful not to have to keep the secret anymore.”

The Family was published on Tuesday by Putnam.

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.