A Stranger Comes to Town

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Disturbances in the Field and Leaving Brooklyn, returns with a psychological novel about memory, identity, and the ways we create ourselves.

"What's the last thing you remember?" This is the question posed to Joe Marzino after being found on a sidewalk, knocked down by a bicycle on Columbus Avenue, one block from New York's Central Park. Joe remembers nothing, not even his own name. He awakens into the world with only the clothes on his back, a throbbing pain in his left ankle, and more questions than answers.

A Stranger Comes to Town is a masterful novel of self-discovery, revealing the multitude of histories and lives we each inhabit, as well as the many ways we seek to reinvent ourselves and reshape our pasts. Joe's search to discover his true identity exposes how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a celebrated author of thirty books including novels, short fiction, poetry, criticism, and works of translation. A Stranger Comes to Town is crafted with immense imagination and a skillfulness that reaffirms Schwartz as one of the most assured writers of our time.