Meet John Trow

(Paperback)

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Description

Steven Armour is a man at a crossroad: his rise up the career ladder has slowed to a crawl, and his family is slipping out of control. But life takes a dramatic turn for Steven when, on a whim, he joins a local group of Civil War re-enactors. Assigned to immerse himself in the life of Private John Trow, Steven soon finds that his weekends at the living history village on Connecticut's Mt. Riga let him escape his everyday disappointments. The complex drills of the Union army seem to come to him naturally, the men of the regiment become his friends, and his growing infatuation with Polly Kellogg, the wife of the regiment's captain, fires a passion that had cooled with his own wife. While the world around him races faster and faster toward the millennium, Steven turns to the simple consolations of nineteenth-century life, a choice that, strangely enough, starts to straighten out both his family and his job. But so thoroughly does Steven embrace the life of John Trow that even Steven begins to wonder if he is just playing a part, or whether the unquiet spirit of John Trow is taking him over. As Steven's identity slips through his fingers, he must ask himself what - and who - he is willing to sacrifice to become the man he believes he should have been.

Reviews

Dyja pulls the past straight into the present with this novel, which manages to be both hilarious and disturbing -- Erica Wagner * The Times *
Thomas Dyja spins a fascinating tale of a man who tries to solve his problems in the present by immersing himself in the past, with eerie and almost heartbreaking success -- Margot Livesey
Dyja has created a modern achetype in Steven Armour, a man in desperate need of some authenticity in his life who, in the end, gets more authenticity than he bargained for -- Jonathan Dee
Wondrous, wry and moving... the novel is a joy... as surprising as it is poignant * Washington Post *

Author Bio

Thomas Dyja lives in New York City with his wife and two children. He has written two other novels, Play For a Kingdom and The Moon in Our Hands, as well as a biography of the civil rights pioneer, Walter White.