An alien artifact transports the small town of Two Rivers, Michigan, to an alternate universe, where political repression is the order of the day and survival an ever-growing concern. The latest novel by the author of The Harvest ( LJ 11/15/92) and The Bridge of Years ( LJ 8/91) offers a study in culture shock as simple people find their values and their future irrevocably redefined. Wilson is a graceful storyteller who relies on the power of his characters to convey the underlying messages of his tale.

The residents of Two Rivers, Mich., wake up one morning to find themselves in a changed world. The entire town and the top-secret government research facility that was located near it have been blasted into a parallel world. Their own history has been erased and they are faced instead with a repressive government controlled by a powerful church that professes a version of Gnostic Christianity. The governing Proctors plunder the town for information, gaining the knowledge to build an atomic bomb; to prevent the contagion of ideas, Two Rivers is designated as the first test site. A few residents--history teacher Dex Graham, physicist Howard Poole, along with Linneth Stone, a cultural researcher sent from the outside to study these "aliens"--slowly piece together the events that brought them to this strange universe and begin to fight against the forces that now control them. The solution lies in a mysterious fragment found in a Middle Eastern desert that turns out to be part of a "wormhole boat," a device for traveling between parallel worlds that physicist Alan Stern came upon and piloted as he took the town of Two Rivers with him into a world that echoed his own obsessions. Wilson ( The Harvest ) blends science, religion, philosophy and alternate history into an intelligent, compelling work of fiction.