The story contained in this book reads a little like an episode of either the X-Files or Kolchak: The Night Stalker. That is, if the episode had been written and directed by Salvador Dali and David Lynch.

Ben Savitch is a reporter for 'The Astonished Eye', a sleazy tabloid newspaper that reports on unusual events. When he received report of a UFO landing in Elderton, the small town in which he was born, he returns there for the first time since his parents left when he was six, to investigate a case which could restart his failing career.

What he finds upon arrival are many things that make even the spacecraft seem normal. Almo Parrish, a dwarf who believes himself to be the last surviving Munchkin, predicts the first leaf to fall each autumn. Chandler Quinn, the town's attorney, who can build or repair any machine. Vida Proust, a girl who died in an accident, yet who walks around town as the townsfolk are too polite to tell her she shouldn't.

This is an impressive first novel. There is a very surreal undertone running throughout the book, and some of the Mr. Knight's turns of phrase will cause you to laugh aloud, he has an unusual way of looking at some things.

But, in addition to the whimsical he also manages to tell a compelling story. One that will keep you turning pages even when you should have been asleep an hour ago. It's a story that will lift your mood, and one that you will not want to end.

There are characters in here that are stereotypical, ones that we have encountered before in many Hollywood movies set in small town America. But that does not mean that there is any lack of originality. In fact the opposite is much more the case. As in a similar way to Lynch's Twin Peaks, it is the very normalness of the town setting that the surreal events occuring stand out and make you notice.