From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the eerie and fascinating (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a richly imagined, powerful new novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious. As the novel opens, a small girl is rescued from a wintry river that winds through a village older than memory, a river that is central to the lives and imaginations of the people who live on its banks. Though initially thought dead, she miraculously begins to breathe again. What happened to her? Who is she? To the parents of a child kidnapped two years previously, she is their daughter, who their prayers have finally returned. To another village family, she is the daughter of their estranged son, left to die by a suicidal mother but now found. Or is she the daughter of a man named Quietly, a man who comes and goes without warning, sometimes bringing life, sometimes death. Everyone in this novel has a story, and the border between truth and fantasy, eternity and the now, is more porous than we would ever think and crossed as swiftly as the river itself.