Ed is a weeper: a card-carrying member of an eccentric union who is hired to cry at funerals, wakes, and burials. It's an odd job, but his services are sorely needed these days, as the town, the region, the country, have weathered so much death and disaster that the so-called normals have gone numb.

Still, years of mourning can wear a man down. The losses pile up and the passion peters out. Even Ed-consummate pro, cowboy poet, seasoned performer!-has trouble bringing forth real tears these days. Then a strange kid-scrawny, nameless, parentless, without past or possessions-comes to town, and something bursts open. Strange forces sweep over the blasted landscape: an onslaught of unbidden feelings, unfamiliar feelings, long since buried.

A surreal story of mourning and messiahs, deserts and droughts, reverends and junkies, miracles and mass hysteria, the lure of despair and the solace of friendship, Peter Mendelsund's Weepers is a novel for this age of anesthesia and anger, about what happens when the scale of loss exceeds our capacity to feel it, and what comes after.