The Book of Selected Tears - James Orr;Stephen S. Ritter

When a package arrives on an unremarkable Tuesday - no return address, an autopsy report inside - a writer between projects begins collecting. What accumulates is an archive of encounters: a marine biologist who followed whale song to the bottom of the Pacific and didn't come back; a Victorian village that walked into a light on the headland wearing their good shoes; a classified report on a region of the universe where the oldest light simply isn't there. Six entities. One condition. A shape that language has been circling for fourteen thousand years without quite being able to name.

The Book of Selected Tears is a novel assembled from the documents people leave behind when something finds them - and the account of the woman who read every one and went to find it anyway.