In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded using a prophesy: a comet will obliterate life on the planet in thirty-six years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes old in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I really do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior’s family members emerge with parallel stories-his anxious mother; his brother, a cocaine addict turned pro-baseball phenomenon; his exalted dad, whose personal mortality summons Junior’s greatest and worst instincts; and Amy, the like of Junior’s life and a North Celebrity to his trip through romance and heartbreak, drug-addled despair, and superheroic feats that could save humanity. While our recognizable world is transformed into a bizarre country at endgame, where federal government brokers conspire in subterranean bunkers, planning residents for emigration from a doomed world, Junior’s final triumph confounds all expectation, building for an astonishing and deeply moving resolution. Ron Currie, Jr., gets to the center of character, and the voices who narrate this distinctively American tour de drive leave an indelible, exhilarating impression.