Mountain Goats' John Darnielle to publish debut novel

John Darnielle, better known under his lo-fi folk moniker of The Mountain Goats, is set to release his first novel later this year.

Wolf In White Van tells the story of a creator of an arcade video game and the impact of his work on the actions on two teenagers. It will be published through Farrar, Straus and Giroux in September.

You can check out a synopsis of the book beneath:

“Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of “Trace Italian”—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.

Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, and are explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tracing back toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.”