Fallen

The acclaimed author of The Preservationist offers a provocative retelling of Adam and Eve: "a work of both high seriousness and wicked laughs" ( Entertainment Weekly ).

Once expelled from the Garden, Eve and Adam have to find their way past recriminations and bitterness, to construct a new life together in a harsh land. But the challenges are many for the world's first family. With the arrival of their children, Cain and Abel, they must discover how to be parents to one son who is everything they could hope for, and another who is sullen, difficult, and rife with insecurities and jealousies. In the background, always, is the incomprehensibility of God's motives as He watches over their faltering attempts to build a life.

Telling the story in reverse, starting from Cain's elderly recollections and working toward Adam and Eve's momentous expulsion from paradise, David Maine draws a convincing, wryly observant, and enthralling portrait of a family--one driven (and riven) by passions, irrationality, and love. The result is an intimate, in-depth story of brothers, a husband, and a wife--people whose struggles are both completely familiar and yet utterly original.

"This book's power to rivet the reader approaches the miraculous."? *New York Times*

"Artful and challenging . . . the topic is fascinating and Maine's writing is suffused with an economical beauty."? *The Tampa Tribune*

"Maine is enormously talented at extrapolating rich characters from a few brief verses."? *The Washington Post*