The Great Night

On Midsummer's Eve, 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, are trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park on their way to a party. And on this night, something unusual and awful is happening in the faerie kingdom. In a fit of sadness over the end of her marriage, which broke up over the death of her adopted son, Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos and mischief that ensue upends and threatens the lives of mortals as well as the immortals. The three heartbroken lovers will become lost in the park, and under the park, and within the memories of the people they lost or drove away, and each will remember through the course of the night that this is not the first time their lives have been touched by magic. Suffering an all-too human despair, and in thrall to her old enemy, Titania puts all the resources of her kingdom at the disposal of a homeless man who thinks he can bring down the mayor of San Francisco by staging a musical production of Soylent Green. Before the night ends the mortals are caught, the show is staged, and Titania discovers, at great cost, a way to undo the menace she's set free, if not to undo her grief. Selected by the New Yorker as one of the best young writers in America, Adrian has created a singularly playful, moving, and humorous novel-a story that effortlessly crosses the borders between reality and dreams, suffering and magic, and mortality and immortality.