The Eternal Parade

It's 2011, almost a year since Evan Penrose graduated from art school, and he still hasn't been able to find work. Consumed by depression, Evan is jealous of his girlfriend Renee, who is energetically chasing her dream of becoming a voice actress, undampened by her own setbacks. Things change for both of them when Renee lands an interview in New York City, and Evan, out for a walk in search of artistic inspiration, gets dive-bombed by a red-winged blackbird.

Not long after, a mysterious band of 18th-century Japanese nomads appears at the door of nearby Saint David's Church, looking for a place to rest. (Needless to say, it's not something you come across often in rural Wisconsin.) His interest piqued, Evan is attracted to these travelers, and he becomes friends with one of them—a young man whose name is, incidentally, also Evan. As the two get to know each other, they learn that they have much more in common than just their name.

In The Eternal Parade, readers will be absorbed by a melancholic, animal-inhabited dreamworld reminiscent of a Haruki Murakami novel, but with the en-passant humor and literary prose of something by Vladimir Nabokov.