Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award: A Michigan town is transported into an alternate-world theocracy in this “intelligent, compelling work of fiction” (Publishers Weekly).

In a top-secret government installation near the small town of Two Rivers, Michigan, scientists are investigating a mysterious object discovered several years earlier. Late one evening, the local residents observe strange lights coming from the laboratory. The next morning, they awake to find their town literally cut off from the rest of the world . . . and thrust into a new one.

Soon the town is discovered by the bewildered leaders of this new world—at which point, the people of Two Rivers realize that they’ve arrived in a rigid theocracy. The authorities, known as the Bureau de la Covenance Religieuse, have ordered Linneth Stone, a young ethnologist, to analyze the arrivals and report her findings to the Lieutenant in charge.

What Linneth finds will challenge the philosophical basis of her society—and lead inexorably to a struggle for power centering on the mysterious object that Two Rivers’ government scientists were studying when the town slipped between worlds . . .

“A study in culture shock as simple people find their values and their future irrevocably redefined . . . a graceful storyteller.” —Library Journal

“Blends science, religion, philosophy and alternate history.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mr. Wilson is adept at drawing fully rounded characters in a few paragraphs . . . The true nature of the disaster that has befallen Two Rivers becomes clear only at the end of the book, in a denouement as poignant as it is unexpected.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Probably the finest science-fiction author now writing.” —Stephen King