Shadowbahn
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A LA TIMES' BEST BOOK OF 2017 (FICTION)
"A beautiful, moving, strange examination of apocalypse and rebirth.” - Neil Gaiman
"Erickson has mobilized so much of what feels pressing and urgent about the fractured state of the country in a way that feels fresh and not entirely hopeless, if only because the exercise of art in opposition to complacent thought can never be hopeless." - New York Times Book Review
A chronicle of a weird road trip, a provocative work of alternative history, and a dazzling discography of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, encompassing artists from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, SHADOWBAHN is a richly allusive meditation on the meaning of American identity and of America itself.
"Jaw-dropping," says Jonathan Lethem (Granta).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Erickson's mind-bending latest, the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the South Dakota badlands 20 years after 9/11, and as gawkers gather from around the fractured remains of the United States to see the structures, Jesse Presley, the twin of Elvis (who was stillborn back in 1935), comes to life as an adult on the 93rd floor of one of the towers. Unsure of where he is, Jesse wanders the floors and eventually bounces through time, experiencing a world in which he is shamed for taking the place of his famous brother. Frustrated and jealous, Jesse makes it his mission to destroy all music. Meanwhile, siblings Parker and Zema hear about the rematerialized Towers while driving from California to Michigan to visit their mother, and they decide to take a detour, yet as music slowly begins to disappear around them vanishing from radio stations and physically from CDs and LPs they soon realize their car, streaming playlists made by their late novelist father, is the only source of song left. Unusually structured and daringly written, Erickson's gem of a novel is equally challenging and rewarding, spinning out thread after thread of story before skillfully tying them together in a satisfying climax.
