In FARTHER AWAY, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul --- the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery.