"Lingering Shadow" is a novel of tremulous hopes and tremendous anticipation that's built up over 5 years of study at Chapel Hill where many things fall into place with an almost surreal delicacy. It relates to an anguished academic for whom unwelcome truths bubble up from some dark cavern, engaging the emotions and the intellect simultaneously. The story moves fluidly through the texture in a culture that's swirling with nostalgia, deception, and promise. It is a humane tale of a researcher stumbling in a dim glow that could be dawn or twilight. It is a novel with a tour of science, culture, and I creeping politics into science, and about the tenacity and mystery of faith. Written in uncluttered style, it enhances the stark quality of the human situation. The language is nostalgic, decently harmonic, and romantic in its sensibility. The solitude of the character, though absolute, is not monotonous. It seems to have different colors, shadings, subtle dynamics; it's an organism with a life of its own. It embodies the theme of metamorphosis. Rich in character and varied incidents and straying with pieces of memory, experience and anticipation into a civilization's fabric, the novel also finds some room for heart.