Portland writer Mo Daviau’s new novel, “Every Anxious Wave,” grew out of her cocktail-party ice-breaker: "If you could go back in time and see any rock show, what would you choose?"

That little gem is the seed of the central conceit in “Every Anxious Wave,” a light-but-heavy love story about a dive-bar owner, Karl Bender, who discovers a time warp in the back of his closet. One of Karl’s first moves is to sell trips through the wormhole to history's most epic rock shows—and to accidentally send his friend Kyle to the year 980 instead of 1980.

Enter Love, stage left, the only force more warpy and weird than Time. The physicist hired by Karl to help rescue Kyle is a woman named Lena, with whom he shares a passion for music and, eventually, a relationship. Like the novel as a whole, their entanglement is fun, funny, and suffused with 90's indie rock—but it hits deeper notes as well. Lena, who survived a rape, could undo it with time travel, expunging a profound and formative trauma. But where would that leave Karl, the man who fell in love with her as she was?

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/radio/article/mo-daviau-every-anxious-wave