The Third Brother: A Novel - Softcover

Nick McDonell's debut novel, Twelve, was a publishing sensation. It was an international best seller and established its seventeen-year-old author as an important literary voice. In The Third Brother, McDonell delivers another remarkable novel, a haunting tale of brotherly love, family tragedy, and national grief. Mike was a lucky child: a vacation house on Long Island, famous family friends, an Ivy League education, and also an older brother, Lyle, who looked out for him. It's 2001, and Mike is a summer intern at a magazine in Hong Kong. Sent on assignment to Bangkok, Mike finds the city electric with violence and hedonism. Nothing goes according to plan. When terrible news about his brother arrives from home, Mike rushes back to the States. Lyle is unstable and suffering from visions of an imaginary third brother. And then, a clear September morning is broken by catastrophe. While the Twin Towers burn, Mike makes an epic trek through the ghostly streets of New York to find and save Lyle. From Patpong to the World Trade Center to Harvard Yard, as his life and country come apart, Mike struggles to find his footing and go on. The joke, it turns out, is on him.

Nick McDonell's "Twelve" created a sensation around the world, establishing its seventeen-year-old author as one of the new and important voices of his generation. "The Third Brother" is his highly anticipated second novel. Mike is a journalist interning in Hong Kong when his editor gives him the assignment: find Christopher Dorr, a brilliant journalist gone AWOL. So begins a propulsive journey that will take a young man headlong through fast nights in Thailand, into the grip of family tragedy, and into the heart of September 11, 2001. Along the way he encounters a kaleidoscope of characters -- the Flying Circus, a hard-living band of journalists trying to expose the Thai government's murderous repression of drug dealers; Tweety, an inexplicably alluring prostitute hungry to leave her world of poverty and desperation; and the third brother, a mysterious, imaginary sibling created by Mike's haunted older brother. "The Third Brother" moves with the speed and purpose of a bullet, offering a devastating portrait of a family caught between love and turmoil, and of a young man stretching to come to terms with his past and to find his future.