Steven J. Huddart

I began reading this novel, which is about Pennsylvania and many other things, with delight when I moved here five years ago. It is a wild mix of fact and fiction; sorting what happened from what might have happened opens perspectives on history, religion, and politics. The punctuation is crazy, too. ``As if...there were no single Destiny," puzzles Mason, ``but rather a choice among a great many possible ones, their number steadily diminishing each time a Choice be made, till at least `reduc'd,' to the events that do happen to us, as we pass among 'em, thro' Time unredeemable,--- much as a Lens, indeed, may receive all the Light from some vast celestial Field of View, and reduce it to a single Point..." (p. 45)