A New York Times Bestseller. Nominated for the National Book Award,
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, and
Winner of the Alex Award, One of the Most Compelling Books of the Year
(Blake Butler, Vice)
Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's Wolf in
White Van is an indelible novel, a hymn for those who inhabit lonely
universes, and a harbor for anyone who has sought refuge in a reality
other than their own (Patrick deWitt).
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean
Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to explore. As the
creator of Trace Italian-a text-based role-playing game that's played
through the mail-Sean guides subscribers through his intricately
imagined terrain, turn by turn, as they search out sanctuary in a
ravaged, savage future America. But when Lance and Carrie, two teenaged
seekers of the Trace, take their play outside the game, disaster
strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is
pulled back through time, toward the beginning and the climax: the
moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most
people live.