by Jess Walter
“Okay,” she asked quietly, “Do you want to try to open your eyes now?”
But he squeezed them as tight as he could, waiting for her to come.
Acknowledgments
I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED to a number of friends, editors, agents and writers who believed in this novel from its first pages and gave it valuable reads: Cal Morgan, Judith Regan, Warren Frazier, Bill Reiss, Dan Butterworth, Jim Lynch, Danny Westneat, Sam Ligon and my lovely wife, Anne Walter.
This book is fiction. To those people whose real pain I witnessed five years ago, I hope there is real peace.
About the Author
JESS WALTER is the author of Citizen Vince, a novel named as one of the year’s best by the Washington Post, NPR’s Fresh Air, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Milwaukee Sentinel, and others. His novels include Land of the Blind and Over Tumbled Graves, a New York Times Notable Book. Walter lives in Spokane, Washington, with his family.
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ALSO BY JESS WALTER
FICTION
Citizen Vince
Land of the Blind
Over Tumbled Graves
NONFICTION
Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy
of the Randy Weaver Family
(originally released as Every Knee Shall Bow)
Credits
Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund
Author photograph by Dan Pelle
Copyright
THE ZERO. Copyright © 2006 by Jess Walter. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader August 2006 ISBN 0-06-120986-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walter, Jess, 1965–
The Zero: a novel / Jess Walter.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-089865-6 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-06-089865-8 (alk. paper)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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