HEROES OF THE FRONTIER

From the bestselling author of The Circle comes a brilliant new black comedy about modern America

A mother and her two young children rent a battered old RV (optimistically christened the 'Chateau') and embark upon a journey through the Alaskan wilderness. At first their trip feels like a vacation: they spot wild animals, build bonfires, enjoy the scenery. But as Josie drives her kids deeper into the forest, dodging wildfires and increasingly eccentric locals, we learn more of the events that forced her to escape her old life. Fraught with unexpected encounters from the sublime to the ridiculous, her tiny family must survive this surreal adventure at all costs, in order to finally discover something clean and redemptive out at the very edge of civilization.

Heroes of the Frontier is a captivating and hilarious novel about family, loss and recovery, and a powerful examination of contemporary American life.

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Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including "Zeitoun," a nonfiction account a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina and "What Is the What," a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. That book, about Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the civil war in southern Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng and dedicated to building secondary schools in southern Sudan. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine ("The Believer"), and "Wholphin," a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. In 2002, with Nínive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Seattle, and Boston. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and there, with Dr. Lola Vollen, he co-founded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. A native of Chicago, Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.