Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel by Dodson, Zachar

ISBN: 0385539835

Author: Dodson, Zachary Thomas

Condition: new

"Archetypes of the cowboy story, tropes drawn from sci-fi, love letters, diaries, confessions all abound in this relentlessly engaging tale. Dodson has quite brilliantly exposed the gears and cogs whirring in the novelists imagination. It is a mad and beautiful thing.--Keith Donohue, The Washington PostWinner of Best of Region for the Southwest in PRINTs 2016 Regional Design AwardsBats of the Republic is an illuminated novel of adventure, featuring hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations, subversive pamphlets and science-fictional diagrams, and even a nineteenth-century novel-within-a-novel-an intrigue wrapped in innovative design.In 1843, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the volatile republic, along with Zadocks future, depends on his mission. When a cloud of bats leads him off the trail, he happens upon something impossible...Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed and the remnants of humanity cling to a strange society of paranoia. Zeke Thomas has inherited a sealed envelope from his grandfather, an esteemed senator. When that letter goes missing, Zeke engages a fomenting rebellion that could free him-if it doesnt destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.As their stories overlap and history itself begins to unravel, a war in time erupts between a lost civilization, a forgotten future, and the chaos of the wild. Bats of the Republic is a masterful novel of adventure and science fiction, of elliptical history and dystopian struggle, and, at its riveting core, of love.