"Jacob was time out of
sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was
supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were."
Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his
eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled
comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the
grace of time. Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their
doorstep — flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight
years old.
All over the world people's loved ones are returning
from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a
miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on
whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly
reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on
the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.
With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth,
award-winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and
morality, love and responsibility. A spellbinding and stunning debut,
The Returned is an unforgettable story that marks the arrival of an
important new voice in contemporary fiction.
