Await Your Reply: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this “deliciously disturbing literary thriller” (People), the lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways—and with unexpected consequences—from the award-winning author of Among the Missing.

“A riveting thriller, chock-full of plot twists, and a sober meditation on the erosion of identity in the age of technology.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Miles Cheshire longs to get on with his life, but can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.

A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.

My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself—through unconventional and precarious means.

A literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, Await Your Reply is an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Kansas City Star, The Arizona Republic, Akron Beacon Journal, Lansing State Journal, The Week, Publishers Weekly

Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing.