A Spy in the Ruins

A great American city is destroyed under mysterious circumstances,wasted by explosions and fire. A lone survivor wanders, lost, among its ruins. Out of a whirlwind of language appear the images of a boy, a youth, a middle-aged man exploring lives he might have led had he made different choices in early manhood, of an old man in a hospital, paralyzed and dying â€" and of a young girl, a young woman, an old woman, alone, abandoned, longing, in an ever-renewed and ever-frustrated search for love. Christopher Bernard’s debut novel, anticipated by his literary admirers for more than eight years, offers a portrait of a society in turmoil, at war, divided and afraid, a world driven from its moorings, in quest of significance in a chaotic time â€" a world like our own, inhabited by people finding what purposes they can, in the creation of meaning out of the chaos of experience.