In this latest novel by British Columbia born, New York City based author Emily St. John Mandel, the author continues her sterling track record of producing magical novels that are at once unsettling and intoxicating, weaving together characters from different eras and diverse locales while simultaneously playing with time and all of its inconsistencies, echoes, and corruptions. Jumping between the long-ago past, the near present, and the distant future, Mandel's oddly vast yet intimate tale weaves in characters first seen in The Glass Hotel where they played minor roles. Here they help to illustrate how there are no such things as chance encounters, that we are all connected in ways that cannot always be fathomed, and that even the most seemingly insignificant detail could blow open a window on an entire universe.