There are three things I will miss when my bandage comes off Thursday, and my stitches are removed, and I can dress and walk normally again.

One is Maria waiting on me hand and foot all day; the second is a quiet time to think and meditate; the third is the chance to read some of the beautiful books out there when I have so much less time.

I’ve loved the books I’ve read these past couple of weeks and am already loving another, a  brilliant new novel I just started reading on Sunday. It’s called Bewilderment and was written by Richard Powers, whose last book ) was the Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

I would give a lot to write like Powers, even for just a few minutes.

The plot stood out, it caught my attention, and the book is living up to its great promise halfway through.

The story is about the Astrobiologist Theo Byrne, who spends his life searching throughout the cosmos and raising his very different nine-year-old son Robin following the death of his wife.

Robin is a warm and kind boy who spends hours painting detailed pictures of endangered animals. In our society, unusual children are quickly labeled “in the spectrum” and put on medication to make them like everybody else, our own and very American take on Orwell’s 1984.

Robin is developing some behavioral problems and is about to be expelled from his school for smashing his friend in the face.

Theo is fighting to keep Robin off psychoactive drugs, a familiar story to many American parents. In the book, three different doctors have tried to prescribe these drugs. As Robin grows more troubled, Theo learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to strengthen Robin’s emotional control, which involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain.

Both Theo and his son are passionate lovers of nature, and like Overstory, nature is really at the heart of the story. There are many soaring descriptions of the natural world, says the bookjacket and that is correct. There is also some serious forewarning about what is happening to our beautiful and imperiled planet. Powers is passionate about the trees and the woods.

This book is readable and profound, but I still have half to go. I’m already obsessing on it, and yes, I could very quickly have been a version of Robin, only my parents would never have fended off doctors with drugs.

This is (I’m 100 pages into it) a beautiful story about two people struggling to make their way amid a natural world that’s going to pieces. I can’t wait to hole up in my remaining days of confinement and finish it. Powers is a fantastic writer, so good I almost hate to turn a page..

Most of the books (and movies) I come across seem too long to me, but this one is a dream to read and savor. Every page is like walking in some beautiful woods. Lots of books say they are love stories; this one is, I think,  the real deal.