“You find yourself wanting to believe in Powell's characters because he turns them into townspeople of your unconscious by the power of his art.”
Description
With writing that is both devastating and tender, Mark Powell (The Sheltering) brings his acclaimed eye to an American marriage on the verge of rupture, spinning an all-too-current tale of the world we live in and the world we fear—and how we may not be able to tell the two apart—perfect for fans of Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles and Denis Johnson’s The Laughing Monsters.
Tess Maynard is coming apart. At home with her three young children in her husband’s Georgia hometown, people keep asking if she’s depressed, if she and John are okay.
Secretly, she’s becoming obsessed with the war on terror—an ISIS beheading video in particular. Something about the victim’s captivity on the computer screen resonates with her. Something inside of her demands endless prayers for a world gone mad.
The carefully constructed life of her husband is likewise beginning to unravel. Now a college counselor, John’s former life bears persistently into the present. Once a contractor at a CIA black site that interrogated suspected terrorists—and one innocent civilian—he is given a choice by the Justice Department: either help with a problem in the homeland, or they investigate.
Forced by an old colleague to spy on a new one, John’s experiences abroad come home to roost in Georgia. For his wife, for his family, he goes along with the game. But just as he and Tess work to salvage their life together, the world comes between them in the form of a young man slowly being radicalized by the professor John is reporting on.
In a moment Tess imagined and never wanted to see, the intersection of their three lives is as devastating as the bomber’s explosion of hate and metal, and as inevitable as the battle between powers great and personal.
Reviews
"An excellent, suspenseful ride... Powell digs deeply into some heavy themes, exploring pervasive violence and the startling path to radicalization that disaffected teens can find themselves on. In this well-constructed and believable story, there’s no easy way out for any of the characters. Readers will be eager to find out how these lyrical and tense stories entwine, and they eventually do, with surprising but inevitable results."
“A beautifully written, disturbing portrait of Americans searching for meaning in a violent, fragmented world. What a marvelous novel.”
“Impossible to put down, Echolocation is the best work of Mark Powell’s young career, and brings all of his prodigious talents to bear on his most compelling story yet. An up-to-the-minute exploration of our political climate and the violence, both physical and emotional, that results from it.”