Adam Johnson presents 'The Wayfinder'

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Pulitzer Prize recipient Adam Johnson for the release of —a sweeping, 700 page epic set in the 13th century in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific during the height of the Tu'i Tonga Empire. Marlon James calls it, "Epic in every sense of the word, this is a high wire act that burns the net below."

The author writes: "While Tahitians speak French and Hawaiians speak English, Tongans speak Tongan. Because Tonga was never colonized, its language and culture are largely intact. If only the same could be said of the indigenous cultures of North America. I'm an enrolled member of South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, yet I've always grappled with that heritage… What is my cultural inheritance? Is there a legacy? Not a word of Sioux came down to me. Filling these silences with researched and recovered narrative is why I write."

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A historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan island who becomes her people's queen.

The Wayfinder is an epic, sweeping novel set in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific during the height of the Tu’i Tonga Empire. At its heart is Korero, a young girl chosen to save her people from the brink of starvation. Her quest takes her from her remote island home on a daring seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire built on power, consumption, and bloodshed.

With the grandeur of Wolf Hall, Shogun, and War and Peace, The Wayfinder immerses readers in a world untouched by Western influence, evoking the lost art of oral storytelling. Far from a conventional swashbuckling adventure, it conjures a world of outrigger canoes and celestial navigation, weaving a narrative that is as much about survival and self-discovery as it is about the sweeping history of the Tongan people.

In this monumental literary work, Adam Johnson explores themes of indigeneity, ecological balance, and the resilience of humanity in the face of scarcity, marking the novel as a profound meditation on both individual and cultural legacy.

Adam Johnson is the author of Fortune Smiles, winner of the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award. Johnson’s other awards include a Holtzbrinck Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship; he was also a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. His previous books are Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He now lives in San Francisco with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Stanford University. (Photo credit: Justice Johnson)

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