Chris Adrian’s richly imagined debut novel of the Civil War and the painful years following does what great fiction should: it offers up a world and populates it with characters who breath on the page.

When young Gob Woodull’s twin Tomo is killed in his very first battle, Gob’s guilt and grief fuel a most unorthodox obsession: the building of a vast machine that will bring Tomo–indeed, all the Civil War dead–back to life. In his quest, he encounters feminists and poets, madmen and charlatans, doctors and soldiers–all affected by the war’s horrors and, in one way or another, all depending on the promise of nineteenth-century science or superstition (or some combination thereof) to see them through to a better world.

“Impressive…. So much more ambitious and profound than most contemporary American fiction.” –The Washington Post

“Remarkable…. Utterly different. A work unlike any that has come before it.”–The Economist

 
Chris Adrian’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Story and in Best American Short Stories. Currently a medical student, he lives in San Francisco.