Autumn Imago

In this poignant spiritual novel that echoes the emotional resonance of The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors, an unexpected reunion at a remote lakeside camp in the Maine woods offers the possibility of reconciliation and healing for a man and his fractured family.

For years, Paul Strand has been estranged from his family. But when his mother's escalating Alzheimer's disease creates a crisis that calls him home, he's pressured into hosting a reunion he's avoided for decades in the one place he thought his family would never return to: the rural state park in Maine where his little sister drowned years before on a family vacation.

Over the course of ten days of guiding his family over difficult terrain, Paul finds himself torn between his desire for isolation and the need to reconnect with the only people who can make him whole. But after a lifetime of separation, is the painful chasm between them—and within Paul's own soul—too deep to overcome?

Bryan Wiggins's beautifully rendered novel illuminates the mysterious power of the wilderness and the resiliency of the human spirit to heal in the wake of devastating trauma.

Bryan Wiggins is a Maine-based author whose works have been published in Canoe & Kayak, Sea Kayaker, and The Maine Review. He is the host of The Pine Cone Writers' Den, a Maine novelist’s collective, and regularly speaks at forums such as the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and The Muse and the Marketplace literary conference in Boston. For the past thirty-four years, Bryan has made annual backcountry pilgrimages to explore the rugged mountain landscape that serves as the setting for his novel, Autumn Imago. Visit him at WigginsCreative.com.