Description
The unnamed man walks city streets, haunted by visions he doesn’t understand, tortured by a tragic past and seeking redemption even though he questions whether he even deserves it. His visions imply that some sort of violence is coming, but they aren’t clear. It’s as if he’s seeing the future through a filter. What’s going to happen? And can he figure out what the danger is in time to prevent another tragedy? This little gem of a novel explores the ruminations of a man who more than anything else wants to return to a past that can never be, a man who must come to terms with the reality of the world as it is, a man who must find his way back to humanity.
The man wanders from city to city, pulled by forces he doesn’t understand, hoping that the next vision will become clear, will identify the violence he somehow knows he’s tasked with stopping. Having no real purpose other than following the destiny laid out for him, he walks and wonders—about small things and large—as his past slowly makes itself known to us. This is a man who wants to be happy, and yet who doesn’t – a man who fears that finding happiness will cut him off from a painful past he can’t bear to forget. So he welcomes the visions, visions of pain and failure and loss, hoping they will somehow guide him to the place he needs to be, the action he needs to take, to succeed at least this time, to make up for the failings of the past. And when he eventually figures out the visions, when he finds himself brought to the place he needs to be, he finally gets the chance to save a group of school children, children he couldn’t save the first time around, and maybe even save himself.
