FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION
An astonishing new novel of loss and grief from "one of our culture's
preeminent novelists" (Los Angeles Times)
Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist.
Expert in a very narrow area--the geological history of a cave
forty-four meters above the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon--he 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 daughter's slow
deterioration, he finds a mysterious note asking for help tucked into
the pocket of a jacket he's 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.
