Novels

(University of New Orleans Press, 2022)

In the fall of 1969, on Sunset Boulevard, a giant billboard advertised the newly released album, Abbey Road. Shortly after it appeared, Paul McCartney's head was cut off the display, mysteriously disappearing. Set against that backdrop, Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney is about more than a specific incident or snapshot of history, it is a story of people and a generation being shaped by their times. Through its ensemble cast, we see how that moment of desecrating the symbol of an era affects the lives of the characters over the course of several decades. Some characters are drawn to confronting the challenges, while others are trying to escape them. But all are affected by the specter of the missing Paul McCartney head. Written in a series of suites, the novel weaves a recurring collection of characters that range from a young couple trying to make their place in an unsteady world, to a student who mistakenly is assumed to be a domestic terrorist, to a battered couple who won't leave a guest room, to a movie legend and his aspiring acting son. As in life, the narratives of all the characters intrude on and interrupt each other's efforts to negotiate the end of a tumultuous decade, while trying to find their ways in the years that follow. Told in a variety of voices and styles, Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney is about finding solace and hope during times that seem short on hope.

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"Sophisticated, subtle, nuanced, and very moving." ―Rick Moody  

"Fierce and true, his fiction is unforgettable." ―Claire Messud

"A moving, illuminating, relevant book." ―Joanna Scott

“I’ve now read all of Adam Braver’s books, and this might be the best. And that’s saying a lot, since I’ve long thought he’s one of the finest writers in the country, an artist who time after time notices what the rest of us miss.”

--Steve Yarbrough

(Outpost19, 2017)

A novel of two strangers swept up in the aftermath of two politicized acts of violence. THE DISAPPEARED traces a pair of survivors: a woman whose husband is missing in a San Bernardino-type of attack, and a man who believes his sister was an unidentified victim of the '93 World Trade Center bombing. With a remarkable mix of nuance and momentum, Braver portrays their post-trauma experience in the face of relentless public feedback.

"Adam Braver’s vivid characters move through a haunted landscape―the world forever changed by terror―that has become all too familiar to many of us. This compelling and elegantly written novel charts the intersections of individual and collective grief, unfolding in unexpected ways. It is both profoundly personal and smartly political, a memorable page turner with urgent, resonant themes." ― Alix Ohlin, author of Signs and Wonder

"Braver’s novel is rich and humane, a tightly controlled, beautifully orchestrated portrait of contemporary terrors and the feedback loops of fear and paranoia they create that mesmerize us and, tragically, sometimes drive us mad. There are those that disappear in the violence, and those that disappear searching for them in their wakes, trying to make sense of insanity." ― Paul Harding, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

(Tin House Books, 2014)

Melding facts with fiction, Misfit is a fascinating exploration of the many personas of Marilyn Monroe.Marilyn Monroe is one of the most iconic figures in the history of Hollywood, and her legendary work on the big screen is eclipsed only perhaps by the lengend of her life off it. Adam Braver’s Misfit centers on the last weekend of Monroe’s life, which she spent at Frank Sinatra’s resort, the Cal Neva Lodge, in Lake Tahoe. Melding facts with fiction, Braver takes moments throughout Monroe’s life―her childhood, her marriages with Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, her studies with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and her role in The Misfits, the film Miller wrote for her―and explores how they informed her tragic end.

"Seamlessly blending fact and fiction, Braver penetrates the vivacious veneer of Monroe's on-screen persona to reveal a woman so adept at embodying a role, that 'it swallows her whole.' Through his gradual unfolding of Monroe's painful upbringing and her desire to be taken seriously in a world that values the superficial, Braver makes Monroe's tragic end freshly poignant." —Publishers Weekly

"To some extent, it's about the details, obviously the result of painstaking research, but crafted as only a great fiction writer can pull off through a seamless application of imagination to fact."
—San Francisco Chronicle

(Tin House Books, 2012)

November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination and explores the intersection of stories and memories and how they represent and mythologize that defining moment in history.Jackie's story is interwoven with the stories of real people intimately connected with that day: a man who shares cigarettes with Jackie outside the trauma room; a motorcycle policeman flanking the motorcade; Abe Zapruder, who caught the assassination on film; the White House servants waiting for Jackie to return; and the morticians overseeing President Kennedy’s autopsy.

“Braver is a terrific writer, an observer of the most acute details; throughout the book, he traces the subtle interactions of his characters as they collide and move apart . . . It's a risky choice, but it pays off because, 45 years later, the only way to see this story afresh may be to observe it on purely human terms.”
--Los Angeles Times

(William Morrow, 2006)

Driving home at dusk, Claire Andrews, an art history professor at a prestigious New England university, accidentally strikes and kills a boy who darts into the path of her car. She is immediately cleared of blame but is nonetheless left psychologically devastated. Haunted by the accident's consequences, Claire also wrestles with her study of one of Vincent van Gogh's final paintings, Crows over the Wheatfield, and its mysterious relationship to the great artist's untimely death.Claire has been writing the definitive book on the connection between the artist's late paintings and his deteriorating mental condition before his suicide. She has uncovered evidence that the painter's death may not have been as it seems and that someone close to van Gogh may have pushed the fragile painter to take his own life. Adam Braver, one of our finest young novelists, beautifully juxtaposes past and present in this remarkable story of art, tragedy, and redemption.

"I'm always happy with an epiphany and a real sense of place, both of which author Adam Braver provides in spades. Throw in science, forgery, manipulation and transition, and end it well, and the result is a very satisfactory read. There's always too much to read, tottering towers of galleys and finished books around my desk, all screaming for attention. Finishing a book is sometimes the exception; racing to the end is the reward."--KQED, San Francisco

(William Morrow, 2004)

Divine Sarah explores a particular moment in the life of the great, early 20th-century actress Sarah Bernhardt. Set during a week in 1906 Los Angeles, the novel evolves around a boycott that is being waged by the League of Decency to prevent Sarah from performing there. She is forced to move her latest production from Los Angeles to the new developments of Venice Beach. And though this is only her most recent skirmish, the 61-year-old Sarah is exhausted and beginning to lose the will to fight. Adam Braver not only gives us an unforgettable Sarah Bernhardt, but he probes the depths of artistry and what happens when it begins to do battle with itself.

"Readers interested in the wars between life and art, art and commerce, inspiration and age, should be captivated by Adam Braver's novel. The fateful moment when enthusiasm (if only momentarily) deserts us is the focus of this author's concern. And, of course, that fateful moment haunts us all."--Carolyn See, Washington Post

(William Morrow, 2003)

Across a rich canvas of truth and imagination, Mr. Lincoln's Wars reveals the president in his darkest hours within the White House walls. We see Lincoln as he explores the meaning of loss through a chance encounter with the father of a slain soldier. And a goodhearted young Union soldier is quickly turned into a killer in the name of President Lincoln. Finally, there is the assassination and the autopsy, as seen through the eyes of John Wilkes Booth, Mary Lincoln, the assistant surgeon general, and one of Lincoln's closest friends.Brilliant in its depiction of the country during the waning days of the war, the book is an insightful and moving exploration of the myth of celebrity and the passions it arouses. More than anything, however, Mr. Lincoln's Wars introduces a talented new writer whose storytelling ability knows no bounds.

Listen to Interview on NPR's Weekend Edition

"Braver's dissection of Lincoln's enduring shadow is no less pungent, and, at times, brilliant and heroic. 'Mr. Lincoln's Wars' is, by turns, profane, erotic, gory, blunt and obsessed with the workings and -- in the various battlefield, hospital and assassination scenes -- the undoing of the human body."--LA Times Book Review