HardCover Pub Date: November 2011 Pages: 528 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Tim O'ien is the best American writer of his generation. -San Francisco Examiner With more than two million copies in print. The Things They Carried is a classic work of American literature that has been changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene. It is a groundeaking meditation on war. memory. imagination. and the redemptive power of storytelling. In the Lake of the Woods is an unforgettable novel of love and mystery. When long-hidden secrets about his past come to light. John Wade-a Vietnam veteran and recent candidate for the US Senate-retreats with his wife to a cabin in northern Minnesota. She mysteriously vanishes and several explanations. all of them disturbing. rise to the surface.