Wolf in White Van

Longlist, National Book Awards 2014 for Fiction

Wolf in White Van
ISBN 9780374292089
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
John Darnielle

John Darnielle is a writer, composer, guitarist, and vocalist for the band the Mountain Goats. The author of Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, Darnielle lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and son. More about this author >

Award Years

Award Status

Award Categories

Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian— a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail— Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.

Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life.

Top
X