A Far Country

From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, a stunning new novel about a young girl s journey through a vast, unnamed country in search of her brother.

Raised in a remote village on the edge of a sugarcane plantation, fourteen-year-old Isabel was born with the gift and curse of "seeing farther." When drought and war grip the backlands, her brother Isaias joins a great exodus to a teeming city in the south. Soon Isabel must follow, forsaking the only home she s ever known, her sole consolation the thought of being with her brother again. But when she arrives, she discovers that Isaias has disappeared. Weeks and then months pass, until one day, armed only with her unshakable hope, she descends into the chaos of the city to find him...

The New York Times - Matt Steinglass

Ultimately, the debt A Far Country owes to Black Orpheus only testifies to the enduring power of its narrative in third-world life. The fear that animates Isabel's quest is the terror not of poverty but of being lost: stripped away from one's village, one's family, from anything one might call home. Her search for her brother is a struggle to anchor herself against the modern world's chaos. In this case, however, it is Eurydice who is seeking her lost musician, not the other way around.

Daniel Mason was born and raised in Northern California. He studied Biology at Harvard, and Medicine at the University of California, in San Francisco. His first novel, The Piano Tuner, published in 2002, was a national bestseller and has since been published in 27 countries. Daniel has also published a short story in Harper's, on the life of the artist Arthur Bispo de Rosario. His new novel, A Far Country, was published by Knopf in March, 2007. Currently, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is at work on his third book.