From Karl Iagnemma, recipient of theParis ReviewPlimpton Prize, comes this fierce and gorgeous novel, the story of an estranged father and son's unlikely wanderings through the Upper Peninsula of nineteenth-century Michigan. The year is 1844. Sixteen-year-old runaway Elisha Stone has turned up in Detroit, a hardscrabble frontier town on the edge of the civilized world. Lighting out on a surveying expedition for the vast unknown wilderness of the northern peninsula, Elisha pens a heartfelt letter to his mother in Newell, Massachusetts. But it is Elisha's estranged father, the Reverend William Edward Stone, who opens the envelope. Grief-stricken by the recent death of his wifea death Elisha could not have known aboutReverend Stone is jolted into action. He must find his son. What follows is a powerful narrative about the complex love between fathers and sons and an evocative portrait of an era of faith, wonder, and violence. A first novel of uncommon wisdom,The Expeditionsis the confirmation of an extraordinary talent.