‘The Returned’ imagines a new kind of world
Brooklyn BookBeat: Author to speak in Brooklyn
In his debut novel “The Returned” (Harlequin MIRA; September 2013), Jason Mott tells the eerie story of a world in which the departed come back to coexist with the living. Raising questions of whether such a world would erupt in chaos or thrive on happiness, “The Returned” is a chilling novel that already has garnered much attention; advance reviews sing high praise and ABC Studios/Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Brillstein Entertainment Partners have adapted Mott’s novel for the television drama series Resurrection.
Mott will appear in Brooklyn to discuss his work on Sept. 25 at the Brooklyn Public Library. “The Returned” traces the story of Harold and Lucille Hargrave, whose world is turned upside down when Jacob, their son who had died tragically on his eighth birthday, is reintroduced into their lives. Nearly fifty years after Jacob drowned, an agent from the International Bureau of the Returned arrives at the Hargraves’ home with young Jacob. Jacob is exactly as he was when he passed, but after years of grieving and aging, his parents are no longer the young couple who tragically lost their child.
Still, Lucille embraces Jacob with open arms, as if she had never lost him. Harold, on the other hand, is more skeptical. Decades earlier he had found Jacob’s body in the river, and now wonders whether this boy could truly be his own son.
It turns out that Jacob is among the many who have returned from the dead to mystify their loved ones who had mourned a heartbreaking loss. Some, like Lucille, are purely elated, while others are overcome with doubt and fear. Eventually, as public sentiment grows increasingly cynical, the Returned are gathered and detained in prisonlike camps. As their population continues to grow, these camps become overcrowded and soon are scorned by the living.