National Book Award Finalist

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory and the forthcoming Bewilderment, an exquisitely rendered novel set in the pediatrics ward of a public hospital that examines the power, joy, and anguish of storytelling.

"If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul. . . it] is bedtime reading for the future." --USA Today

In the pediatrics ward of a public hospital in the heart of Los Angeles, a group of sick children is gathering. Surrogate parents to this band of stray kids, resident Richard Kraft and therapist Linda Espera are charged with keeping the group alive on make-believe alone. Determined to give hope where there is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape. But the inevitable is foreshadowed in the faces they've grown to love, and ultimately Richard and Linda must return to forgotten chapters in their own lives in order to make sense of the conclusion drawing near.

Author: Richard Powers
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 06/28/2023
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.30w x 0.88d
ISBN: 9780060976118
Harperperennial Edition


Award: 1993 National Book Awards Nominee - Fiction

About the Author
Powers, Richard: - Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels. His most recent, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, and he has been a four-time National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.