Ghostlands

Francesco Helios, a groundskeeper in New Shining Capital, runs a “mower,” a seventy-ton leveling machine that keeps the Lawn free of the bloom of mushrooming monuments. Because in this country, the past doesn’t stay buried. Structures shove their way up through the turf: the obelisk of the Washerman Monument, the temple of “Old Frog Face,” and a thousand other stubborn relics from a half-recollected past. Then a ghostly woman who recognizes Francesco appears on the Lawn. She calls him the Timebreaker. Layering its fever-dream odyssey across a time-ravaged and history-haunted America, Ghostlands is a time-bent adventure that is also a haunting story of family, identity, and the past’s refusal to stay dead.