Blue Walls Falling Down

Book excerpt: Stella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly—and inexplicably—breaks off their engagement, Stella throws herself into a tough South Chicago teaching assignment. There she meets Peter Clavier (P.C.), a psychologist-activist whose uncle—a pastor—has long prophesied for Peter a future of otherworldly greatness. As Stella draws out Peter’s past, the novel follows P.C. 's trajectory from a Cabrini-Green childhood to surreal stardom in the orbit of underwritten radical politics. When his boss offers Peter a marquee microphone and he moves to D.C., Stella returns home to Milwaukee in search of steady ground. She finds her self-sacrificing father hosting basement meetings that mix nostalgia and conspiracy. In the confluence of comfort and catastrophe, Stella is invited to wager on faith. Written with a style and sensibility that have been compared to David Foster Wallace and Dostoevsky, James Joyce and Saul Bellow, Blue Walls Falling Down chronicles the eternal questions that agitate our subterranean frequencies and demand more than the human spirit can give or answer alone.