The Greatest Show on Earth
A Horror Epic for These Troubled Times
Over 10 years in the making, The Greatest Show on Earth is Tres Crow's most personal story yet. It's epic scope and grand cast of characters belies a thoughtful and provocative character-driven story that upsets the well-trodden landscape of Armageddon. The Greatest Show on Earth uses the end of the world as a backdrop for intertwining stories about the difficulty of being alive and the mania which defines our age.
Taking the form of a loosely-tied braid, the novel starts with a group of seemingly disconnected characters—Josh Stone, a husband and father who blames himself for the loss of his only child; Katrina Freeman, a teenager whose dying mother leaves a horrifying legacy; and Chuck Gardner, a homeless alcoholic on the up—and slowly weaves their disparate lives tighter and tighter until they are terminally bound, forced to confront those things they’d spent their whole lives running from.
At once heartrending and joyous, novel and familiar, visceral and dreamy, The Greatest Show on Earth describes the human spirit in all its broken and beautiful glory. It's the cast of Ennet House from Infinite Jest placed in the apocalypse of Wendig's Wanderers or Stephen King's The Stand. There are no heroes. There are no easy villains. There are only very flawed people, caught up in something much larger than themselves, trying to find meaning in a circus of unwitting performers and antagonistic carnival staff. The Greatest Show on Earth turns the end of all things into a celebratory vision of humanity’s greatest failure, but also our greatest victory.
New chapters of The Greatest Show on Earth will be released periodically.