We’re introduced to the Edes on Day Seven Thousand Four Hundred and Eighty-Three — that is, the number of days since Malcolm, after going on a real birthday bender, crawled into his childhood bed and, at the tender age of twenty-five, refused to leave.

Patchett has written a Brazilian adventure tale, headed “down a river into the beating heart of nowhere,” the throttle on the boat—and on the novel—open full.