Shadowbahn

December 12, 2016
In Erickson’s mind-bending latest, the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the South Dakota badlands 20 years after 9/11, and as gawkers gather from around the fractured remains of the United States to see the structures, Jesse Presley, the twin of Elvis (who was stillborn back in 1935), comes to life as an adult on the 93rd floor of one of the towers. Unsure of where he is, Jesse wanders the floors and eventually bounces through time, experiencing a world in which he is shamed for taking the place of his famous brother. Frustrated and jealous, Jesse makes it his mission to destroy all music. Meanwhile, siblings Parker and Zema hear about the rematerialized Towers while driving from California to Michigan to visit their mother, and they decide to take a detour, yet as music slowly begins to disappear around them—vanishing from radio stations and physically from CDs and LPs—they soon realize their car, streaming playlists made by their late novelist father, is the only source of song left. Unusually structured and daringly written, Erickson’s gem of a novel is equally challenging and rewarding, spinning out thread after thread of story before skillfully tying them together in a satisfying climax. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.

Starred review from December 1, 2016
The sleep of reason produces monsters, said Goya--including monsters of architecture and history that meet, most uneasily, in the pages of Erickson's (These Dreams of You, 2012, etc.) latest.It's a startling scenario, a kind of deus ex machina at the beginning instead of the end of a story: What would happen if, two decades after their collapse, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were to loom up in the South Dakota Badlands? Well, it being America, they turn into a tourist attraction made all the more alluring by the fact that there's a presence up on the top floors of the southern building--a presence that just happens to be the revenant brother of another American icon. It would be a spoiler to get too much into specifics of that fellow's identity and why on earth he happens to be inhabiting a building he never lived to see, but suffice it to say that with this book, perhaps his oddest yet, Erickson stakes a claim to be one of the most centrifugal writers at work today. Even then, he works his magic mostly by conjuring sci-fi-ish plotlines and then having characters move across them in more or less realistic ways: youngsters on their way to visit family on the coast are pulled down a dusty rabbit hole into a place that requires conversations on Adlai Stevenson, Elvis, the old folk song "Shenandoah," Dealey Plaza, Churchill, Wounded Knee, RFK ("Was his big brother being metaphorical now? Ironic? Literary?"), and the whole swirl, for better and worse, of American history. Whatever is normal is upended, but it's all oddly believable. Throughout, Erickson, a master of the mot juste, writes with archly elegant lyricism: "He heads toward a west that is the dreamer's true north, where the desert comes looking for us and curls at the door, a wild animal made of our ashes...." Think Philip K. Dick on smoother acid and with a more up-to-date soundtrack, and you've got something of this eminently strange, thoroughly excellent book.

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January 1, 2017
Since the publication of his debut novel, Days between Stations, in 1985, Erickson has become a standard-bearer for the literary-fiction movement known as avantpop, which liberally borrows motifs from popular media. His latest work revolves around the sudden reappearance of the iconic World Trade Center Twin Towers in the middle of South Dakota's Badlands during an indeterminate future several years from now where secession-advocating disunionists have fractured America's social fabric. When thousands of people gather along the highway near the towers to bear witness, they begin hearing an assortment of songs emanating from the buildings that are different for each listener. Wrapping around this surreal premise are two alternating story lines. One involves a brother and sister driving cross-country on a secret shadowbahn highway. The other features Elvis Presley's stillborn twin, Jesse, who awakens very much alive on the South Tower's ninety-third floor. Erickson's many fans, which include such literary lights as Jonathan Lethem and Thomas Pynchon, will find plenty of narrative gems and symbolism here to savor and contemplate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)