This is a work of fiction, not a guidebook. While the geography of the United States of America in this tale is not entirely imaginary - many of the landmarks in this book can be visited, paths can be followed, ways can be mapped - I have taken liberties. Fewer liberties than you might imagine, but liberties nonetheless.

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the days, then the hours, then the minutes until his release tick away, he can sense something is about to go very wrong indeed. Two days before he is due to get out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, apparently in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow makes his way back home, only to encounter en route the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small town and meeting a cast of weirdly familiar characters flung together by the shared sense of impending doom. All around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break. And Shadow is being pursued doggedly by someone with whom he must somehow make his oeace.