During a layover between trains on his way to a new city, a chronic job changer encounters August Sander's eponymous photo in the Detroit Museum of Art, and becomes obsessed with researching its origin. An uninspired tech writer in Boston catches a glimpse of a stunning red head walking against the tide in the Veteran's Day parade and vows to find her. The three farmers of the picture meet Sander on May 1, 1914 and go their separate ways as the Great War swallows them and their worlds.

And all of these intertwining plots serve to accompany and demonstrate what amounts to a critical essay on photography, history, and the mechanics of memory filtered through Benjamin and Heisenberg. Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance utterly astounded me. Hats off to Richard Powers for this humorous, insightful, witty, and hair-raisingly intelligent novel.