3 Farmers Their Way to Danc PB

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers's brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and provide the reader with a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress.

"The time of the photograph of the three farmers (the frontispiece of this book) is May 1, 1914. The photographer is August Sander. The book is called a novel, and all that is in it is not fact. Nevertheless, this is more a treatise on war, the dance of death, that weaves back and forth between 1914 and the present and manages to bring in, in one way or another, Sarah Bernhardt and Henry Ford as well as assorted soldiers and civilians. Powers sums up his book best when he writes: 'There is no way around the memory of the First War, that dance lying just to the right of the photo's frame. There is only going through it.' That is just what Powers does, thoroughly." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

Dazzling and audacious. . . Nothing short of astounding. - Philadelphia Inquirer

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers's brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and offer the reader a glimpse into a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress.

"Dazzling and audacious. . . Nothing short of astounding." --Philadelphia Inquirer

The critically acclaimed debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory and the forthcoming Bewilderment.

"A writer of blistering intellect . . . Powers is] a novelist of ideas and a novelist of witness, and in both respects, he has few American peers." -- Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers's brilliant and compelling novel.

As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and offer the reader a glimpse into a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress.

RICHARD POWERS is the author of ten novels. The Echo Maker won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Powers has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.

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