Publisher Review

America has always been aspirational-the search for 'a more perfect union,' as outlined in the preamble to the Constitution, ongoing. But in The Magic Kingdom, Russell Banks's beautifully crafted story of love and betrayal in an early-20th-century religious community, those ideals undermine one man's chance for happiness, revealing the flaws in our American dream along the way * Boston Globe * Russell Banks's new novel is eerily timely. Can what's gone wrong in the past offer keys to the future? The Magic Kingdom confronts our longings for Paradise; also the inner serpents that are to be found in all such enchanted gardens -- Margaret Atwood A fascinating tale narrated over half a century -- 28 Books You'll Want to Read This Fall * New York Post * Banks dazzles in this story of a Floridian Shaker community torn apart from within and without . . . The author uses himself as a narrator, a metafictional device that throws the fictional past into stark relief -- 30 Books We Can't Wait For This Fall * Los Angeles Times * Engrossing . . . As ever, Banks writes gorgeously about [Florida's] natural wonders, pointing out the strange magnetism a place needs to have to attract the world's detritus . . . Banks is writing with an eye to the present * Los Angeles Times *