Super Short Summary

In Richard Powers's debut novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, a narrator identified as "P" becomes obsessed with an August Sander photograph displayed in the Detroit Institute of Arts, exploring the history of World War I, photography, and modernism; meanwhile, copyeditor Peter Mays becomes infatuated with a red-headed actress and discovers his own connection to the same photograph, leading to an encounter with P. The novel involves themes of war.