What begins as a mystery or horror novel slowly becomes a case study in grief and loss spanning the better part of 50 years. Universal Harvester transforms from one book into another as it moves from beginning to end. The scenes are dark, uncomfortable and unsettling, set in a barn that looks to be just outside of town. What Jeremy finds when he watches are pieces of video spliced onto the tape. Then another customer brings in a different tape, with a similar complaint. The quiet tranquility of Jeremy’s life and work is interrupted when one customer brings in a tape and complains that there is something on it that shouldn’t be there. The premise explained to those reading the inside cover of Universal Harvester is that a 22-year-old named Jeremy lives in a small town called Nevada (pronounced Ne-vay-da) and works in a video rental store in the late 1990s. Its jacket design hints at this, being a warped, multicolored image of corn, as if having been taken from an old, deteriorating VHS tape. The mystery of the story stays within the bounds of the Iowa corn that surrounds its characters. The Mountain Goats singer-songwriter creates a story that quietly echoes across generations, dealing in loss, grief and the attempts to project normalcy that follow such things. “A few rows of corn will muffle the human voice so effectively that, even a few insignificant rows away, all is silence,” writes John Darnielle in his second novel Universal Harvester, a follow up to his debut, Wolf in White Van.

Creepy and poignant by turns, Universal Harvester is a deep dive into damaged lives and the different ways people try to escape grief, loss, and darkness.Title: Universal Harvester Author: John Darnielle Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publication Date: FebruRating: As the once-peaceful fields and barns surrounding Nevada begin to seem sinister and threatening, Jeremy must come to terms with a truth that is as devastatingly sad as it is shocking.

And what he sees on the videos is so strange and disturbing that it propels him out of his comfortable routine and into a search for the tapes' creator. Two days later, Lindsey Redinius brings back She's All That and complains that something is wrong- 'There's another movie on this tape.' Curious, Jeremy takes a look. But when Stephanie Parsons, a local schoolteacher, comes in to return her copy of Targets, she has an odd complaint- 'There's something on it,' she says. It's the 1990s, pre-DVD, and the work is predictable and familiar he likes his boss, Sarah Jane, and it gets him out of the house, which has felt desolate and empty since his mother died six years before. Jeremy works at the counter of Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa.

From the author of the acclaimed Wolf in White Van comes a horror-infused thriller set in a tiny Midwestern town.

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