Branches

The bad news . . . well, it's not great.

"I told people it was the election that broke me. But that's not the truth. It was the silence after . . . Sometimes it feels like everything caught fire at once. The world took a wrong turn somewhere."

What if the world really did take a wrong turn? If you were offered a way out, would you take it? . . . And at what cost?

Branches is about living in the age of doomscrolling, unable to look away from a world spinning out of control yet helpless to stop it. The story's all-too-familiar setting takes readers to an America descending into chaos and asks what it would take for one person to change it.

Readers are praising Branches: A Novel as a thriller that combines the history-bending intrigue of Philip K. Dick ("The Man in the High Castle"), the modern-life satire of George Saunders ("Tenth of December"), and the high-concept science fiction of Ted Chiang ("Story of Your Life," "Arrival," "Exhalation").

Branches is at once a mystery filled with unpredictable twists and a deeply personal journey through fear, grief and redemption.