Telephone: A Novel

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTIONAn astonishing new novel of loss and grief from one of our cultures preeminent novelists (Los Angeles Times)Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologistslashpaleobiologist. Expert in a very narrow areathe geological history of a cave fortyfour meters above the Colorado River in the Grand Canyonhe is a laconic man who plays chess with his daughter, trades puns with his wife while she does yoga, and dodges committee work at the college where he teaches.After a field trip to the desert yields nothing more than a colleague with a tenure problem and a student with an unwelcome crush on him, Wells returns home to find his world crumbling. His daughter has lost her edge at chess, she has developed mysterious eye problems, and her memory has lost its grasp. Powerless in the face of his daughters slow deterioration, he finds a mysterious note asking for help tucked into the pocket of a jacket hes ordered off eBay. Desperate for someone to save, he sets off to New Mexico in secret on a quixotic rescue mission.A deeply affecting story about the lengths to which loss and grief will drive us, Telephone is a Percival Everett novel we should have seen coming all along, one that will shake you to the core as it asks questions about the power of narrative to save.