Author(s): Richard Powers

Fiction

On a winter night on a remote road in Nebraska, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only close relative, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman ? who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister ? is really an identical impostor.

Shattered by her brother?s refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case studies describing the infinitely bizarre worlds of brain disorder. Weber recognizes Mark as a rare case of Capgras syndrome, a doubling delusion, and eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened on the night of his inexplicable accident. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition.

Set against the spectacular spring migrations of Sandhill cranes from the Platte River in Michigan, The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery that explores how memory, instinct and relationships make us who we are. First published 2006.