Synopses & Reviews
Dr. Ruby Okada meets a charming man with a Scottish accent in the elevator of her psychiatric hospital. Unaware that he is an escaping patient, she falls under his spell, and her life and his are changed forever by the time they get to the street.
Who is the mysterious man? Is he Archie B. Billingsly, suffering from dissociative identity disorder and subject to brilliant flights of fancy and bizarre, violent fits? Or is he the reincarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson, back to haunt New York as Long John Silver and Mr. Edward Hyde? Her career compromised, Ruby soon learns that her future and that of her unborn child depend on finding the key to his identity.
With compelling psychological descriptions and terrifying, ineffable transformations, Bob Stevenson is an ingenious tale featuring a quirky cast of characters drawn together by mutual fascination, need, and finally, love.
Review
"A witty, roller-coaster ride of uncertain identity set against the gritty certainties of New York City. In compelling, unadorned prose, Richard Wiley gives us a bewitching and ultimately moving tale." Caryl Phillips, author of A Distant Shore and The Lost Child
Synopsis
Richard Wiley is the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Maria Thomas Fiction Award for the best novel by a returned Peace Corps volunteer. His previous seven novels have been publicly praised by writers such as Wole Soyinka, Russell Banks, Michael Herr, T.C. Boyle, and Charles Johnson and we are expecting many new, high profile endorsements for this novel.
Bob Stevenson features a cast of quirky, memorable characters all trying to aid a protagonist suffering from dissociative identity disorder, a fascinating and still relatively unexplained mental illness. Whether readers are drawn into the mystery of whether he is a psychotic, a con man, or most intriguingly the reincarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson, they will enjoy the surreal ride and the uncanny humor.
Bob Stevenson represents a new direction for Richard Wiley, whose previous novels were all set abroad and explored issues of foreign languages and cultures. In this novel, set in the United States during the time of Hurricane Sandy, Wiley mines the landscape of the human mind, addressing big questions such as how is art related to being? How does child abuse affect the psyche? In what ways is psychiatry an art rather than a science?
About the Author
Richard Wiley is the author of eight novels including Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and Ahmed’s Revenge, winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he divides his time between Los Angeles, California and Tacoma, Washington.