James A. Michener, America's preeminent bestselling author, takes us into a world he knows so well, the world of books, in this stunning new novel, a suspenseful contemporary story about people involved in writing and publishing. A writer, his editor, a critic, and a reader are the central characters in this absorbing story, set in a town called Dresden, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and in New York City. Like Michener himself, Lukas Yoder is a novelist who has had a long and successful literary career. He has written what he believes is his final book. Yet when a mysterious and violent tragedy strikes his community, Yoder finds himself preoccupied by it, and inspired to write a new kind of fiction. Inside the frenetic world of publishing, Yoder's editor struggles to preserve her integrity as her firm becomes the target of a corporate takayer, and a crisis threatens Yoder's