Absolute Music

O n an eerily warm October evening ina suburb of Detroit, a new father and struggling fantasy novelist named McPhailgazes at a honey locust tree . The sight triggers amemory of the sudden, inexplicable death of Hannah, whom he loved when theywere both fourteen. So begins a year-long odyssey, in which McPhail becomesobsessed with recollections of Hannah, puts his job and his marriage injeopardy, and fears that his “obsolete consciousness” is spiraling intoapocalyptic religious and ecological desp