In Our Other Lives: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “A compelling portrait.

  — Kirkus Reviews

• Wheeler’s rich blending of Elisabeth’s grief over her lost husband and isolation from her family with transcripts from Schwaller’s investigation slowly builds an inviting tale. Readers will be intrigued by Wheeler’s provocative juxtaposition of extremism in both Christian and Muslim ideologies.

  — Publishers Weekly

• Theodore Wheeler’s In Our Other Lives is the kind of novel that makes you think deeply about the issues that have faced the United States since 9/11, while also telling a gripping story with great characters.

  — Writer’s Bone

• Theodore Wheeler weaves a compelling and complex narrative of public pain and private loss, of lives ruined by tragedy and at the same time redeemed by discovery. He shows us that people are mysteries, even to those who love them most, and that war and its aftermath reach deep into our land and our hearts.

  — Mary Morris, author of Gateway to the Moon

• Reminiscent of the late Denis Johnson’s masterpiece, Tree of Smoke, Wheeler’s sterling novel tackles the modern world’s attempt to systematically catalog the chaos of life. This clear-eyed look at society’s entrance into a fully digitized world delivers a host of fascinating characters’ unknowing struggles within the purview of the recently unveiled Patriot Act. As they wrestle with the old questions of what to believe in, and how to ground a life if you no longer believe in anything, it becomes clear the new information-gathering apparatus fails to understand the longing and need that propel each of them forward. An ambitious and absorbing achievement.

  — Devin Murphy, author of Tiny Americans

• Theodore Wheeler’s In Our Other Lives is wholly engrossing. Through the mysteries of the Ahls family, narrated through the eyes of the all-knowing servers that see, hear, and record everything in the wake of the Patriot Act, Wheeler deftly weaves the intricate, vulnerable lives of his characters against the stark backdrop of the American plains, resulting in a poignant book that’s as human as it is political. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.

  — SJ Sindu, author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies

• A captivating, thought-provoking, and sweeping novel filled with power and depth. Set against the backdrop of America’s near-decade-long war on terrorism, In Our Other Lives offers a nuanced portrayal of public and private lives and the way those lives intersect, disconnect, and become lost in translation. Different kinds of losses and invasions radiate through this novel, and Wheeler reveals complexities of the human heart with subtle, beautiful prose that surprises as often as it delights.

  — Kassandra Montag, author of After the Flood

• Powerful, provocative, fascinating, and deeply unsettling: In Our Other Lives weaves the threads that connect our lives and those who account for this haywire of memory, love, faith, reason, and understanding. I am still thinking about this one, the way it snuck up on me, and how it will not let go.

  — Robert Olmstead, author of Savage Country

• With the pace of a thriller and the patience of a psychological study, In Our Other Lives depicts ordinary people consumed by tragedy and obsession. Wheeler skillfully depicts the struggles of mothers, missionaries, and spies, while always paying attention to the small, beautiful impulses that make them human.

  — Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters