A Pulitzer Prize Finalist: This collection of moving short stories is a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times and places (Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle).

On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.

At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories–among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner–cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the struggle for survival … hand to hand, word to word, by one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.

A Library Journal Best Book of 2020