Eidetic Transubstantiation

Drawn into the Cuban Missile Crisis, point man to President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas, undercover amongst the radicals at Berkeley, Michael Edwards is embedded as an active participant in the turmoil of 1960s and 70s America. Then, in the 1990s, he finds himself on the front lines in the war against cyberterrorism. But he is no Forrest Gump, bumbling his way through history. He is blessed with an almost magical power that makes him indispensable to the American government. Unfortunately, his powers of memory and adaptability force him to change identities so often that he finds himself desperately in search of himself. Eidetic Transubstantiation is certainly a historical novel, frequently an existential novel, often a romantic novel, but finally its decade-morphing narrator makes it a self-conscious metafiction."Michael Edwards has a photographic memory on steroids. It's called Eidetic Memory... Palmer's (Two Cities) globe-hopping tale is written with a thirst for knowledge and a love of detail that make for an exciting read, especially because it's about a character who is often on the forefront of new technology or fields. The overall point that people are not one thing but go through a variety of different incarnations is a strong one, especially because this sweeping story progresses through Michael's retirement... Skillful storytelling. A smart, discerning but protracted tale about an extraordinary man's unique layers of memory." -Kirkus ReviewsWilliam J. Palmer is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University. The Uses of Money is his eighth novel. The four novels in his "Mr. Dickens" series of Victorian murder mysteries have been chosen as selections by numerous national book clubs, and have been translated into Spanish and Japanese. The three novels of his The Wabash Trilogy include a sports novel, a crime novel and a comic novel, all set in the Wabash valley of Indiana in the late 20th-Century. Website: wjpalmernovelist.wordpress.com.