Empire of Light

From "one of the most interesting and exciting new novelists in years" (Electric Literature), a story of imagination and survival in the tradition of Carson McCullers and Denis JohnsonTrouble follows Alvis Maloney wherever he goes. After an adolescent prank leads to a stranger's death, the teenage Maloney rambles westward. He lands in a small North Carolina town the rest of the world forgot and falls in love—in love with his neighbor Molly, in love with a lonesome quarterback called Miles, in love with a whole community of enduring misfits and losers.But at the same time, another life takes shape in his seductive, dreamlike visions: a horse named Forever, a princess with hypochondria, and an electric city that's always just out of reach. As these two promises of home fight for their hold on Maloney, the story careens toward disaster, and in the end Maloney must choose between love and redemption.From the virtuosic author of Sophia,...