In the late winter of 2006, I returned to my home town and bought 612 acres of land on the far western edge of the county.β So begins, innocuously enough, J. Robert Lennonβs gripping, spooky, and brilliant new novel. Unforthcoming, formal, and more than a little defensive in his encounters with curious locals, Eric Loesch starts renovating a run-down house in the small, upstate New York town of his childhood. When he inspects the title to the property, however, he discovers a chunk of land in the middle of his woods that he does not own. Whatβs more, the name of the owner is blacked out.
Loesch sets out to explore the forbidding and almost impenetrable forestβlifeless, it seems, but for a bewitching white deerβthat is the site of an eighteenth-century Indian massacre. But this peculiar adventure story has much to do with Americaβs current military misadventuresβand Loeschβs secrets come to mirror the American psyche in a paranoid age. The answer to whatβand whoβmight lie at the heart of Loeschβs property stands at the center of this daring and riveting novel from the author whose writing, according to Ann Patchett, βcontains enough electricity to light up the country.β
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