The Book from the Sky

"I'm on my way back. I was one of the first they took away." So begins Robert Kelly's remarkable science fiction novel about a literally divided self. "I" is Billy, the book's protagonist, a boy who is captured by a group of aliens who take him to a cave and meticulously, if seemingly by caprice, remove his "young pure smokeless lungs" and other internal organs to replace them with two gray squirrels, a live hawk, a shoe, and a variety of other bizarre objects. Billy's body and mind are spun off into a curious twin, one whose adventures Billy is forced by his captors to watch and try to make sense of—not a simple task when he sees his doppelgänger stealing everything from him: body, name, family, his beloved Eileen. Complicating matters, and forcing Billy deeper into his ironic journey of self, is a mysterious pamphlet called "The Book from the Sky," written by what may be yet another variation of Billy himself, Brother William.