“Wanderers is a work of fiction,” reads the edition notice at the start of Chuck Wendig’s new novel. “Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”
As boilerplate legal disclaimers go, okay! Sure! Except with Wanderers, it’s… kind of a lie? The good kind of lie. A lie that, like Wanderers, brings truth into the light.
It begins with a grabby hook: One June morning in Maker’s Bell, Pennsylvania, a girl starts sleepwalking. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t respond. She leaves her farm, then her town, walking road after road, staring ahead, never deviating from a course only she can see. Others join her. Then more. Days pass.