Excerpt from The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

On his desk, Paul has a little silver statue on a marble base. It has sort of a funny shape which is hard to describe, like a wave or an ellipse. Paul tells Jonas that this statue may be used as a focal point, a device to bring him back to the present. It doesn’t have to be the statue, he says. It could be anything: a candle, a piece of wood, a lamp, a ball or knickknack, anything, really, but he likes to use this statue because its shape is open to interpretation.

"You are here now," says Paul. "The past is gone, done. Your memories can’t physically hurt you. But we need to explore them. We need to understand what happened."

And then they talk.

Excerpted from The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau. Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Dau. Excerpted by permission of Blue Rider Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.