

After hiring a private investigator, Fiona eventually locates her daughter.

Fiona is staying at the house of a friend-the well-known photographer and artist named Richard Campo-while she looks for her daughter, Claire. Jake and Fiona eventually sleep together. On the plane she meets a handsome, younger man named Jake Austen. From this interaction, Charlie contracts HIV, though this is not revealed until later in the novel. While he and Yale are separated, Charlie Keene-Yale’s boyfriend-sleeps with Julian Ames, an actor and friend in the group. While Yale is lying down upstairs, the group goes to Nico’s apartment. Nico, one of Yale’s friends, has died of AIDS though his family refuses to admit this fact. The Great Believers opens with a scene of Nico’s funeral. These chapters are narrated in the third-person limited perspective and switch between 2015, on the one hand, and 1985-1986 on the other. The novel’s chapters alternate between two characters: Yale Tishman, a gay man working in the arts industry in 1980s Chicago, and Fiona Marcus, a friend of Yale’s who travels to Paris in 2015 in order to reconnect with her estranged daughter. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai is a novel dealing with the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago.

The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Makkai, Rebecca.
