The American Zig-Zag

Volume One
Van Reid's picaresque novels about 19th Century Maine have garnered warm reviews (including a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and loyal fans with their unique mixture of adventure, romance, and laugh-out-loud humor. Now he returns with this inaugural "Zig-Zag" across the Americas - with six of his own short stories that veer geographically from the Portland waterfront to the Chicago stockyards, from the wilds of Manitoba to a lonely chain of islands off the coast of Brazil and ranging in tone from the suspenseful to the comic.

In the grand tradition of 19th century journals, he has recruited talented poets, humorists, and musicians to bring even more weight and variety to the proceedings - and also ten fine artists to illustrate the resulting stories, poems, cartoons, and essays - all with the express purpose of hearkening to an earlier era of American journals that delights and entertains!