As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia's days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care for many, it is a second chance.īut outside the clinic, the reality is different. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. The highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh-'a gifted chronicler of the human condition' (Washington Post Book World)-is a tense, riveting story about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston.įor almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.'-Janet Maslin, New York Times Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. It is a leap into the idiosyncratic pulse of the American heart, written with the bravado, literary power, and feverish foresight that have made Hawley one of our most essential writers.

Unforgettably vivid characters and a plot as fast and bright as pop cinema blend in a Vonnegutian story that is as timeless as a Grimm's fairy tale. Noah Hawley's new novel is an adventure that finds unquenchable lights in dark corners.

Their quest becomes a rescue mission when they join up with a man whose sister is being held captive by the Wizard, impregnated and imprisoned in a tower. Who lies at the end of the road? A man known as The Wizard, whose past encounter with Louise sparked her own collapse. He breaks out to join a woman named Louise and a man called The Prophet on a quest as urgent as it is enigmatic. Something is happening to teenagers across America, spreading through memes only they can parse.Īt the Float Anxiety Abatement Center, in a suburb of Chicago, Simon Oliver is trying to recover from his sister's tragic passing.

The first big novel of 2022: an epic literary thriller set where America is right now, in which a band of unlikely heroes sets out on a quest to save one innocent life-and might end up saving us all.

Intimate Strangers by Laura Taylor