There is an infectious aching loneliness that floats through the characters of this book and haunts the reader. Brandon paints the distinct world of each of the many characters we follow in this novel, including a wolf and a dead college student, with a mix of painted brevity and astonishing thoroughness. It is a novel that really lives with you, even after finishing.
— From RobertOn the top floor of a small desert hospital, an unlikely piano prodigy lies in a coma, attended to by his gruff, helpless father. Outside the clinic, a motley vigil assembles beneath a reluctant New Mexico winter?all watched by a disconsolate wolf on his nightly rounds. To some the boy is a novelty, to others a religion. And above them, a would-be angel sits captive in a holding cell of the afterlife, finishing the work he began on Earth, writing the songs that could free him.
A Million Heavens brings John Brandon's deadpan humor and hard-won empathy to a new realm of gritty surrealism?a surprising and exciting turn from one of the best young novelists of our time.