Mo Daviau's Spirited Novel Explores Love And Music With A Time-Traveling Twist

Published: May 12, 2016, 6:57 p.m.

b'Portland writer Mo Daviau\\u2019s new novel, \\u201cEvery Anxious Wave,\\u201d grew out of her cocktail-party ice-breaker: "If you could go back in time and see any rock show, what would you choose?"

That little gem is the seed of the central conceit in \\u201cEvery Anxious Wave,\\u201d a light-but-heavy love story about a dive-bar owner, Karl Bender, who discovers a time warp in the back of his closet. One of Karl\\u2019s first moves is to sell trips through the wormhole to history\'s most epic rock shows\\u2014and to accidentally send his friend Kyle to the year 980 instead of 1980.

Enter Love, stage left, the only force more warpy and weird than Time. The physicist hired by Karl to help rescue Kyle is a woman named Lena, with whom he shares a passion for music and, eventually, a relationship. Like the novel as a whole, their entanglement is fun, funny, and suffused with 90\'s indie rock\\u2014but it hits deeper notes as well. Lena, who survived a rape, could undo it with time travel, expunging a profound and formative trauma. But where would that leave Karl, the man who fell in love with her as she was?

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/radio/article/mo-daviau-every-anxious-wave'