Twenty-Four Shadows — Tanya J. Peterson

In her eye-opening and heartrending fourth novel, award winning author Tanya J. Peterson takes us inside the anguished mind of Isaac Bittman-an average family man whose mysterious and progressively violent mood swings, many of which he cannot remember, begin to unravel the lives of those closest to him. After a series of bizarre encounters, including losing his job and waking up half-dead in the wilds of Idaho, he begins treatment at a revolutionary mental health facility, where the childhood trauma he's repressed for decades leads to revelations that his personality has splintered into twenty-four shadows, or "alters." The novel intricately weaves together Isaac's internal angst and his wife and best friend's struggles to retain both a private and public semblance of normalcy. Stark and realistically rendered, Twenty-Four Shadows delves into the thought processes and erratic habits of a regular man dealing with life-altering mental illness, providing an empathetic, insightful glimpse into a misunderstood and often stereotyped condition.