From the celebrated author of Big Fish comes an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters, their dark legacy, and the magical town that entwines them.

Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen, older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel, beautiful, naďve—and blind. When their parents die suddenly, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn’t possibly survive on her own . . . or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down. In this new novel, Southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling novel Big Fish. Wildly inventive and beautifully written, The Kings and Queens of Roam is a big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind.

Praise for The Kings and Queens of Roam

"A fanciful story layered in symbolism and ripe with lyrical language..."
— Kirkus Reviews

"Daniel Wallace is one of our most masterful storytellers and his latest creation, The Kings and Queens of Roam, is brimming with his brilliant visions and wise observations about life. Part fairytale, part myth and legend, the city of Roam and her inhabitants--both living and dead--materialize in ways that are equal parts comedy and tragedy. At the heart of it all are two sisters: Rachel and Helen, the twists and turns of their relationship leading the reader on a journey that ultimately is a moral tale--one of grief and forgiveness and the meaning of love."
—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life

"There is much magic in Daniel Wallace's superb new novel--curses, caves, even a haunted wood--but the most impressive magic is Wallace's understanding of the human heart's depths and vagaries. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a fairy tale for adults."
—Ron Rash, author of Nothing Gold Can Stay

"Reading The Kings and Queens of Roam is like living, for a few hundred pages, in another world: beautiful, epic, tragic, and ultimately redemptive. In Roam Daniel Wallace has created his own Macondo. This is his best novel yet."
— Wesley Stace, author of Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

"Full of adventure, ghosts, steam-punk industrialists, silk-traders, wild dogs, and mysterious lumberjacks, Daniel Wallace’s The Kings and Queens of Roam is touched with both magic and whimsy. I paused just as often to savor the beauty of Wallace’s sentences as I did to wipe away tears at his characters’ predicaments. An epic and modern fairy tale of sisters and friendship, The Kings and Queens of Roam is about the lies we tell, to ourselves and to each other, and how those stories go on to shape the world around us."
— Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

"Digby liked to say he had more ghosts in his tavern than he had customers, which used to be funny—until it started being true. Ghosts were his customers. He didn't call them ghosts, though, because that word summoned up images of ghoulish night-visitors who stole the faces of children while they slept (that's what his father used to tell him ghosts did), and Digby didn't believe in that sort of thing."
— Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

A recent article courtesy Roam News and Courier