The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T. S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal - if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal - is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T. S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.
T. S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once he's aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T. S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.
As he travels away from the ranch, we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T. S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T. S. reads, he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.
All he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world, and friends are hard to find.
T. S.'s trip begins at the Coppertop Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How does one map the delicate lessons learned about family, or communicate the ebbs and flows of heartbreak, loneliness, and love? There are some answers here on the road from Divide, and some new questions, too.

Reif Larsen is twenty-eight, studied at Brown University, and has taught at Columbia University, where he is finishing his MFA in fiction. He is also a filmmaker and has made documentaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, and sub- Saharan Africa.