After the loss of her only son, Sara Black finds herself spending more and more time at the Seattle hospital where she is a nurse, tending to "the tall man," the victim of a gunshot wound whose identity has remained a provocative riddle-until he starts talking. As the man she knows as Samuel draws Sara into a strange and chilling story about his past on an Alaskan island, she must face some truths of her own, as well as the realization that the patient to whom she's devoted herself may not be who he says he is. Daniel Coyle is a contributing editor at Outside magazine and the author of the nonfiction book Hardball: A Season in the Projects, which was named best sports book of the year by the Sporting News and was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures. A former resident of Chicago, he lives with his wife and four children in Homer, Alaska. "A moving first novel...Coyle is a clever writer, and he ably weaves his main character's jumble of emotions into a satisfying whole. The novel takes a handful of unforeseen turns-for one thing, the tall man becomes an ever more perplexing figure...An impressive debut."-Booklist "Written with pathos and a gifted journalist's clarity of detail, Waking Samuel forces us to consider how we might react when confronted with losing everything-including our very identities." -Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers The roles of the healer and the healed get all twisted up in Waking Samuel... A haunting first novel.-Anchorage Daily News