Resurrectionists, the - Tapa dura

"The Sunday Independent" (Ireland) Collins is a chronicler of small Americana and the downbeat drifters that have been passing through ever since "The Grapes of Wrath." Six decades after the photographic bleakness of Steinbeck's desolate depression landscapes, there's a cinematic precision about Collins's description of brassy diners, beat-up Chevys, windswept gas stations, and tumbleweed skittering down empty streets.

The Booker and IMPAC Prize-nominated author of "The Keepers of Truth" delivers a haunting novel of psychological suspense about a wayward family's search for salvation in an America that has left them behind. The solitude of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Michael Collins's heart of darkness in this compelling story of the unquiet dead. Almost thirty years ago, when Frank Cassidy was five, his parents burned to death in a remote Michigan town. Now Frank's uncle is dead too, shot by a mysterious stranger who lies in a coma in the local hospital. Frank, working menial jobs to support his unfaithful wife and two children, takes his family north in a series of stolen cars to dispute his cousin's claim on the family farm. Once there, however, Frank also wants answers to questions about his own past: Who really set the fire that burned the family home and killed his parents? Will the stranger, who hangs between life and death, be able to shed light on long-buried secrets? As the television blares the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, news of Jim Jones, and endless sitcom reruns, simple answers -- and the promise of the American dream -- seem to recede from Frank's grasp. Brilliant and unsettling, "The Resurrectionists" is an ironic yet chilling indictment of American culture in the seventies and a compassionate novel about a man struggling to overcome the crimes and burdens of his past.