Selden Edwards' debut novel, The Little Book, has what they call in the publishing biz a great "back story." Edwards began writing the novel in 1974 when he was a newly minted English teacher; during summer vacations (and, I would guess, tedious faculty meetings) over the next 30 years, Edwards kept plugging away at his novel. Now, at long last, the magnum opus has been published.

The subtitle of Edwards's Twain-indebted debut, written over the course of 30 years, might be “A California Yankee in Doctor Freud's Court.” Following a physical assault, Stan “Wheeler” Burden

This is a wide-ranging novel of grand ideas, of the promise of the new century, now so far behind us. It is a story of fathers and sons, to be sure, of the bygone days when an American aristocracy held the reins of power. And it is a tale of books within books, and their influence upon history.

Wheeler Burden one day finds himself mysteriously transported from 1988 San Francisco to the Ringstrasse of 1897 Vienna.

...and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (for an impossible chance to make amends or peace), draw a little from Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" and H.G.

In its historical scope it resembles Anthony Powell’s wonderful series A Dance to the Music of Time, but with the introduction of the fantastic, through the device of time travel, and myth, through the arts and psychology, it delivers a very different and rather more modern experience.

This month, we're thrilled to introduce one of the most imaginative and original novels we've had the pleasure to read in a long time. The Little Book is a genre-bending novel that defies categories.

Dilly Burden was a legend and a hero.

Everything is connected, we are told in "The Little Book," and indeed it is in this tale. Caught up in an eternal loop, as well, though the book does come to a tender close, but only to start up again in the mind's eye. It's hard not to be thoroughly taken with such an approach to both the real and imagined past.

One of “Ten Things We Love This Week”, Entertainment Weekly’s ‘Must List’, August 15, 2008

Back to the Future for the intellectual set.

It would not be surprising to see this book become a classic.

He's created a complete world, one that's a pleasure to enter.