THE LOST BOOK OF ADANA MOREAU by Michael Zapata

Adana Moreau, wife of a pirate and mother to Maxwell, writes a sci-fi novel called The Lost City.  She pens a sequel but destroys the manuscript shortly before her death in New Orleans around the time of the stock market crash of 1929.  A copy of the sequel resurfaces decades later, and we must wonder how it survived.  Thus we have two timelines:  one that follows Maxwell’s adventures after his father leaves home to find work and one that follows the discovery of the sequel in the early 2000s.  Parallel universes and theoretical physics play a small role in this novel, but these subjects are not the reason that the book is confusing.  One reason is that there are two characters named Saul; one is Benjamin’s father, and one is Benjamin’s grandson; Benjamin himself is the one who has the copy of the sequel.  After his death, his grandson Saul discovers the manuscript among his grandfather’s effects.  Saul and his disaster-seeking journalist friend, Javier, embark on a quest to deliver the manuscript to Maxwell and find themselves in New Orleans amidst the devastation of Katrina. Another reason that this book is hard to follow is that several characters tell first-person stories, and I had to be sure not to lose track of who was narrating and which timeline the story belonged to.  Also, occasionally a character reappears after having been introduced many pages ago, and then I found myself flipping backwards to reacquaint myself with them.  In other words, this novel presents a reading challenge but does not deliver a sufficient reward.