The Nowhere Road Papers

As much memoir as fiction, The Nowhere Road Papers follows Christopher Loeman, a poet and scholar of no real distinction in "the real world." Loeman finds himself in a peculiar, magical facsimile of Midwest America after "leaving" his other home. The circumstances of his leaving are slowly revealed to him as he meets the strange characters that populate the universe of Nowhere Road. Following in the footsteps of his literary hero Jorge Luis Borges, Loeman discovers that some of these characters are either provisional or obsolete versions of himself. Soon he realizes that his magical new surroundings are tied directly to his actual, physical heart (or what he thinks is his actual, physical heart), which is stolen from him and enchained by its thief at the center of his bizarre, mystical new reality. Loeman sets out to discover how he arrived on the road, how he can find his heart, and eventually make his way back to his wife, Eliza. Interspersed in this "road story" are glimpses at the author's life, which is bound to Loeman's own, much like the Poet's heart is to the strange landscape of Nowhere Road. The Nowhere Road Papers is a bildungsroman that examines the costs of finding oneself and making one's home in an existential wilderness.