Weeks later, another man ends up dead, and it’s up to Sheriff Cooper to keep the townspeople calm and to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This experimental sanctuary-not quite utopia or dystopia-starts to crack when one of the residents is discovered dead from an apparent suicide.

The residents of Caesura are hiding from themselves, too-some are former criminals, while others (they hope) are innocents mixed up in bad business and in need of a new life and new identity'”witness protection at its most extreme.

The people who live in the Blinds have new identities and choose brand new names by combining the names of Hollywood actors and vice presidents: So for instance, Greta Fillmore runs the local bar, Spiro Mitchum keeps the store fully stocked, and Calvin Cooper patrols as town sheriff. Their identities have been swiped from their brains in a very Eternal Sunshine fashion-not because they were hoping to escape some sort of heartbreak, however, but because they are trying to escape violence in their past. The title refers to a remote, off the grid town in the middle of Texas-a place named Caesura, a small village the locals call 'the Blinds.' No one is really a local, per se everyone who lives in Caesura came there from someplace else, although their origins are unknown. Reading The Blinds, however, snapped me out of it even as it provided a satisfying escape.

And I’ve often thought, 'It would be really nice to get away from everything, disconnect from the world, live a quiet life in the middle of nowhere, and forget about it all.' I have yelled at my television and deleted social media apps from my phone. I have to admit something: Several times in the last few months I’ve wanted to snap my laptop shut and throw it across a room.

The blinds by adam sternbergh