It is 2027. August Helm is thirty years old. A biochemist working in a lab at the University of Chicago, he is swept off his feet by the beautiful and entirely self-assured Amanda Clark. Animated by August’s consuming desire, their relationship quickly becomes intimate. But when he stumbles across a liaison between the director of his lab and a much younger student, his position is eliminated and his world upended. August sets out to visit his parents in Words, an unincorporated village in the heart of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. Here, he reconnects with several characters from his past: Ivan Bookchester, who now advocates for “new ways of living” in an age of decline; Hanh, formerly known as Jewelweed, who tends her orchard and wild ginseng, keenly attuned to new patterns of migration resulting from climate change and habitat destruction; and Lester Mortal, the aging veteran and fierce pacifist who long ago rescued her from Vietnam. Together, the old friends fall back into a familiar closeness. But much as things initially seem unchanged in the Driftless, when August is hired to look after Tom and April Lux’s home in Forest Gate, he finds himself in the midst of an entirely different social set, made up of wealthy homeowners who are mostly resented by the poorer surrounding communities, and distanced in turn by their fear of the locals. August soon falls head over heels for April, and different versions of his self collide: one in which the past is still present in tensions and dreams, another in which he understands his desire as genetically determined and chemically induced, and then a vaguely hoped-for future with April. When Lester is diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, Ivan comes clean on a ghastly past episode, and April makes a shocking revelation, a series of events ensues that will change all involved forever.    As approachable as it is profound in exploring the human condition and our shared need for community, this is a story for our times. Praise for Painting Beyond Walls “An impressive and beautiful novel . . . Painting Beyond Walls joins Driftless and Jewelweed to shape the second half of an impressive career. Characters from his earlier novels appear prominently in this book, as does its setting, the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin. . . . In his first book, The Last Fair Deal Going Down , Rhodes created a city beneath Des Moines, a sub-city. Before he enters it, the protagonist tells his sister, ‘I’ll write you a giant novel . . . a book that is the inside of me, a great, sprawling ironclad prodigy of emotion.’ David Rhodes, a Midwestern treasure, has now written six such novels.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune “Terrific . . . Fans of Rhodes will appreciate the return to fictional Words, Wisconsin, and the familiar cast of characters that populate the unincorporated village. They’ll recognize Rhodes’ voice, as singular and lyrical as ever, and his distinct style; often waxing profound for page after luxurious page before suddenly punching out a hilarious one-liner. Rhodes continues to explore the human condition in profound but unpretentious ways.” — Madison Magazine “David Rhodes, a Wisconsin resident, takes characters from his widely-praised novel Driftless and Jewelweed and imagines them into the future in Painting Beyond the Walls. In doing so, he reinvents the ‘Midwestern pastoral’ genre, confronting questions of science, technology, power, evolution and the effects of a rapidly changing society on a rural area.” —Pioneer Press “Rhodes’ novels about the small, modest town of Words, Wisconsin, are in accord with the place-anchored, morally and spiritually inquisitive fiction of Kent Haruf and Marilynne Robinson even as this fourth installment, set in the very near future, takes a surprising turn. . . . Rhodes is rhapsodic in his descriptions and compassionate and wise in his observations, while his endearing, caring characters speak in peculiarly formal, even academic dialogue and the audacious plot veers into speculative territory and postulates . . . thought-provoking hope.”— Booklist , starred review "A thought-provoking meditation on human relationships at the cellular level as well as our relationship to Earth, the cosmos, and life itself. . . . Rhodes has a knack for writing acute psychological realism; these characters live and breathe, and by the time the novel ends we feel like we know them. Additionally, several story arcs reveal a humanistic, righteous indignation regarding the violence toward women so endemic to Western civilization, and characters frequently engage in thought-provoking discussions of everything from cellular science to sexual politics and world economies. The epilogue recalls Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles , albeit much more optimistic. Although elements of the novel are adjacent to the near-future sci-fi writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Rhodes is primarily concerned with the timeless human phenomena of love, loss, origi