A Million Heavens

Author(s): John Brandon

Location(s): Albuquerque

Genre(s): Fantasy

Location

Content

“A Million Heavens,” Brandon’s new novel, takes place in a parched town on the outskirts of Albuquerque. It opens with a wolf making his nightly rounds, eyeing a group of pilgrims who stand vigil in a parking lot. Above them, on the sixth floor of a medical clinic, a boy named Soren lies in a coma after collapsing at his first piano lesson, during which he sat at a keyboard for the first time ever and played 16 seconds of miraculous music. Soren’s father sits bedside, ignoring his fleet of food trucks and waiting for his son to awaken. In chunks of two and three pages, the novel alternates among these characters (the wolf included) and a handful of others: chiefly a middle-aged motel employee, who doubles as the dying town’s mayor: and Cecelia, a community college student grieving the loss of the song­writing genius who fronted her now defunct band. (Reggie, that dead singer, appears as a character too, trapped in what may be limbo and manipulated by the unknown into writing a memorable song.) NY Times

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