SOLVED. Not your typical science fiction: people with troubled pasts get letters saying 'we know about this event, meet us here at this time'

[Rachel]

GENRE: This book is science fiction, but it may not be categorized as science fiction. When you start reading the book, you don't know it's science fiction until maybe 1/3 to 1/2 the way through.

PLOT DETAILS: People from all over the country get letters or messages of some type saying that someone (it's not clear who) knows about a specific event in that person's past (that is a crime or embarrassing that the recipient thought was private knowledge). The character we follow in the beginning of the book is an African American male, working as a janitor when he gets his letter telling him to board a bus to X location at X time. It doesn't say why.


SPOILER BELOW





When he gets there he finds that other people received similar letters. They are there to receive training (it's not clear what the training is for some time). They are living in little cabins in a rural area and doing their training. The people are as confused as the reader is about the training. My memory gets hazy here, but the people in training learn that people influential in US history have also participated in training. Ultimately they learn they are in training to defend against aliens/supernatural events.

YEAR: I read this book between 2013-2016. I think I read about it in a magazine or newspaper. It was a book review that didn't give away the aliens part of the book. It might have been the New York Times.

I purchased the book in paperback shortly after I saw the review. The cover was white with black, red, and blue art (abstract).

The author was male. The book was published in the US.


A friend of mine brought The City & The City by China Mieville to a book exchange and it made me think of the book I'm trying to find. The commonality between the two books is as you are reading everything seems normal, then the author starts to give you bits and pieces, before you discover things are not at all how you expected (and the book has very strong elements of science fiction). I'd love to recommend this book to my friend. =) I sent it to my dad after I finished reading it, but the aliens were too much for him.

[Rachel]

Writing out the details jogged my brain enough to refresh my Google searching. =)