Autumn Imago - by Bryan Wiggins (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this poignant spiritual novel that echoes the emotional resonance of The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors, an unexpected reunion at a remote lakeside camp in the Maine woods offers the possibility of reconciliation and healing for a man and his fractured family.

For years, Paul Strand has been estranged from his family. But when his mother's escalating Alzheimer's disease creates a crisis that calls him home, he's pressured into hosting a reunion he's avoided for decades in the one place he thought his family would never return to: the rural state park in Maine where his little sister drowned years before on a family vacation.

Over the course of ten days of guiding his family over difficult terrain, Paul finds himself torn between his desire for isolation and the need to reconnect with the only people who can make him whole. But after a lifetime of separation, is the painful chasm between them--and within Paul's own soul--too deep to overcome?

Bryan Wiggins's beautifully rendered novel illuminates the mysterious power of the wilderness and the resiliency of the human spirit to heal in the wake of devastating trauma.

Review Quotes

"Grabs you in the first chapter and doesn't let you go until the last paragraph." -- George Smith, Bangor Daily News

"Elegantly told with a fully-developed cast of characters and wonderful sense of place." -- Jim Nichols, winner of the Maine Literary Award and author of Closer All the Time

"Delivers a powerful, emotionally charged story about loss, love, and redemption." -- Steven Konkoly, author of Dispatches

"Captures the magic of Baxter State Park in a moving tale of the conflicts of the human heart." -- Paul Corrigan, poet

"Autumn Imago resonates with an enduring lesson of forgiveness framed within the wild beauty of Maine's Baxter State Park." -- Joseph Souza, Author of Unpaved Surfaces

"There is so much that is so good here, starting with the opening chapter, compelling characters with wonderful arcs, and a family pathology that Autumn Imago captures superbly." -- Frank O. Smith, PEN/Bellwether prize finalist, book reviewer for the Maine Sunday Telegram

"Wiggins' sharp details of life and death . . . reverberate (in a book) about facing challenges and persevering in the face of soul-crushing difficulty." -- Portland Press Herald