'ONE OF THE FINEST PROSE STYLISTS IN AMERICAN FICTION.' NEW YORK TIMES

From the award-winning author of The Piano Tuner comes a remarkable collection of interwoven tales of men and women navigating the wonder, mystery and magic of the world around us.

On a fated flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever.

A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon.

 A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself.

In nineteenth-century England, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his more fearsome opponent, and in smog-filled London a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.

At times funny and irreverent, always moving, these stories cap a fifteen-year project that has won both a National Magazine Award and Pushcart Prize. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-wracked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are lives of ecstasy and epiphany.