NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In George Stade's fourth novel, lovers of thrills and chills, and, yes, romance, will find what they want as he takes us from a New York City gone crazy to the wild upstate. Released by Xlibris, Swimming Through the Flotsam in Which We Live and Move and Have Our Being, realistically depicts what the play we dread and desire would actually be like.
A devastating plague is raging over the earth. The victim suffers a two-month latent period during which he is infectious but shows no symptoms. Spread by aerosol, the virus causes millions of people to be infected and infectious, but without them knowing it. At the "climax" of the disease, there is what a character calls "a rite of disinhibition." In this crucial stage, the victim does what he or she most wanted or feared doing, no matter how murderous or suicidal.
As America -- like the rest of the world -- sinks into chaos, and as the Red Death kills forty percent of the population, two fiercely antagonistic groups emerge. There is the apocalyptic religious group called Swimmers, because their charismatic leader was first seen swimming out of the Hudson River. The other group jokingly calls itself "Our Gang," a very mixed group that has become immune to the plague as a by-product of an experimental treatment of herpes. What they see and do as they hike north from New York City to a farm upstate forms the substance of the engrossing Swimming Through the Flotsam in Which We Live and Move and Have Our Being. For more information on this book, log on to www.Xlibris.com.
About the Author
For forty years, George Stade was a professor of English and Comparative literature at Columbia University, where he earned the Great Teacher Award. During that time, he published three novels, a collection of essays, and well over a hundred articles, reviews, and introductions for such journals as Partisan Review, Hudson Review, Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. He is the Consulting Editor Director of Barnes and Noble Classics. He lives in New York City with his wife. His four grown-up children live north of the City, outside Washington, DC, and in Boulder.
Swimming Through the Flotsam in Which We Live and Move and Have Our
Being* by George Stade
Publication Date: July 1, 2009
Trade Paperback; $19.99; 304 pages; 978-1-4415-0438-8
Cloth Hardback; $29.99; 304 pages; 978-1-4415-0439-5
To request a complimentary paperback review copy, contact the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 7479. Tear sheets may be sent by regular or electronic mail to Marketing Services. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (610) 915-0294 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7876.
For more information, contact Xlibris at (888) 795-4274 or on the web at www.Xlibris.com.