All Will Be Revealed Hardcover - 2007

Excerpt

Verena Swann sat beside her brother-in-law, Leopold Swann, writing with a pencil in a large leather notebook. Head to one side, eyes half-closed, she watched her hand move across the page, leaving behind line after line of small jagged letters–the nearly illegible scrawl of her late husband, Captain Theodore Swann. She had no idea what it said, of course; the deciphering was for later, after the rush of words. All she could think of right now was the pressure on the back of her neck, the tingling in her arm, the motion of her hand. All that mattered was the indescribable feeling of being borrowed, a sensation as strange as her first intimate kiss.
She reached the bottom and Leopold turned the page for her.

At that very moment, Augustus Auerbach guided his wheelchair into the photographic studio behind his Fifth Avenue mansion. As big as a warehouse and built entirely of glass, it felt less like a building than a porthole for viewing the sky. Auerbach glanced up at the clouds, then wheeled himself across the stone floor to the bed at the center. As he did so, his two photographic models removed their dressing gowns and stretched themselves naked on the sheets. His assistant took up position behind the camera.

“Let us begin with a kiss,” said Auerbach, and watched as the models fit themselves together like the two halves of a broken cup. None of them could know that a dozen photographs later, despite careful precautions, an accident would occur: a child would be conceived.

Auerbach put his hand to his chin. “A little more passion, please.”

Thousands of miles away, a group of men on dog sleds stopped before a canvas tent half-buried in snow. For weeks they had traveled the vast ice plain in search of that tent, till the size of the land and its utter emptiness shrank them to nothing. They had become like ants crawling over the surface of a mirror. Now the sky seemed made of ice, the ice around them made of sky. The sun burned beneath their feet.

One of them dismounted and walked over to the tent, then parted the flaps and crawled inside. After removing his glacier glasses he could make out a footlocker, a backpack, a pair of boots set in a corner, and a snowsuit laid out as if to dry. Eventually, he forced himself to look at the corpse lying on top of the sleeping bag, naked: the earthly remains of Captain Theodore Swann, missing three years and presumed lost.

At the table in her parlor, Mrs. Swann watched her hand move across the page:

You see, my dear, there is nothing other than this turning, round and round again. Everything is connected to everything else, everything moves in a great wheel, and the emptiness at the center is God.

Media reviews

Praise for All Will Be Revealed
“All Will Be Revealed will hold you from start to finish – and hold you tightly. It is one of those rare novels that delicately takes you places you never expected to find yourself, one of those rare novels that becomes a movie in your head. The story is alive and breathing in large part because of Robert Anthony Siegel’s vigorous and clear prose. Just watch what happens to you as you read it. Afterwards, you’ll be spreading the good news.”
–Clyde Edgerton, author of Walking Across Egypt and Raney

Praise for Robert Anthony Siegel
“[Siegel’s] portraits (loving and otherwise) of the Glassers, New York prosecutors, and various lowlifes are right on the money.”
– New Yorker

“Full of richly drawn characters and jolting plot twists – Glasser’s time behind bars is especially chilling – Siegel’s debut novel works both as a parable of how quickly the high and mighty can fall, and as gripping drama. ‘Money’ well spent.”
– New York Post

“Like New York, Siegel’s pacing is quick and his language taut, compassionate without being mawkish…It’s a hell of a first novel.”
– Albuquerque Journal