All the World Drowning

Kazimir Jonah Godwin is named for his great-great-great-great-grandfather, founder of the rural Wisconsin town of New Eden where Kazimir is growing up. Taught by his father to seek the prophetic gifts of his ancestors and by his uncle to follow the paths of nature, Kaz must ultimately probe the line between spiritual revelation and insanity. By his side will be his best friend Micah, a pot-smoking, punk-rocking Pentecostal, and his first love Eliza, a feral child of nature and imagination. Through survival camp-outs, vision quests, road trips, drug deals, and a tremendous amount of fishing, Kazimir’s heritage will haunt him until he can find a way to make sense of his family’s bizarre, sometimes dark history and unique gifts. Benjamin Preston’s first novel is a surprisingly comic, vigorously insightful exploration of sober themes, evocatively set in the Wisconsin countryside of his own youth.