This is the second book in Smiley’s Langdon trilogy, a saga about an Iowan farm family over the last 100 years.  I read the first book, Some Luck, a little over a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Early Warning is even better.  It covers the years 1953-1986, and Smiley deftly interweaves real life events into the lives of this fictitious family.  Rosanna and Walter Langdon had five children, four of whom married and had children, so there is a large cast of characters.  Fortunately, there is a family tree at the front of the novel, which I relied on often at the beginning but needed less and less as I read on.

Early Warning is a delightful read.  I just reserved the final book in the trilogy at my local library and look forward to learning more about many of these very human characters.