John Wade was a lonely boy who taught himself magic tricks to bring some praise upon himself, to be loved. And in Vietnam, too, he proclaimed himself a "sorcerer"--he wasn't much of a soldier, and perhaps his magic powers would earn him the respect of the other men. Later, he tries to make his involvement at My Lai disappear--first, by falsifying his army records, then by denying, deep inside himself, that he was ever there.

He builds his entire life upon deceit. A bright and appealing politician, he climbs steadily through the party ranks until he runs for the U.S. Senate; then his My Lai secret is unearthed and destroys his career. O'Brien's novel opens upon John and his wife, Kathy, in the aftermath of the defeat, trying to make sense of their lives, trying to salvage their marriage.

And the novel unfolds as a sort of philosophical mystery--occasioned by Kathy's disappearance and the subsequent search for her in the lake wilderness of northern Minnesota. O'Brien never solves the mystery, instead offering hypotheses of what may have happened, what may yet happen--an ambitious, inventive technique that may prove unsettling. What O'Brien offers is a portrait of one man and woman at the most critical juncture of their relationship. A beautifully written, haunting novel that evokes lives in deep crisis.