Tower of Iron Will

A strange book, befitting a very strange TV show. The book purports to be a dossier of documents relating to the town of Twin Peaks, assembled by "the Archivist" with his commentary and with further annotation by an FBI agent assigned to analyze the dossier after its discovery. The first section of the book concerns the history of the Pacific Northwest, in particular the death of explorer Meriwether Lewis and the pursuit of the Nez Perce Indians, and tying both events into the Twin Peaks mythos. The next section is all about UFO sightings and Men in Black style government cover-ups. The book then moves on to the history of the town of Twin Peaks, filling in details about the Packards, Martels, Hornes, and the Bookhouse Boys. Finally the book returns to UFOs and pulls in characters like L. Ron Hubbard and Richard Nixon.

I suspect some readers will be discouraged by the historical and UFO sections, but it is worth pressing on. The middle section about the town of Twin Peaks fills in lots of backstory about the characters in the TV series. At least one of the major cliffhangers from the series finale is resolved in the book. I suspect some of the details revealed here relate to plots that the creators do not intend to revisit in the new series and want to get out of the way. Interestingly, the main through-put character of the book is a minor character from the second season who only appeared in 3 episodes (I checked IMDB).

Based on the content of the book, I suspect the creators plan to place the weirdness of Twin Peaks in a broader context involving UFO contact. In the best case this might be an exploration of the idea that UFO experiences are just the modern interpretation of what older civilizations would have considered encounters with spirit beings. In the worst case scenario we are about to get David Lynch's version of X-Files, and even that might be pretty cool.