John's book is being excerpted in McSweeney's Quarterly, as a booklet in a little inside-front-cover pocket of Issue 37 which should be out in early March 2012. Keep your eye out for it. Because you can't read the text on the booklet cover displayed here, below you can read a description of the chapters McSweeney's has culled from the Big Novel.
"It’s 1897, Hod Brackenridge has left behind a miner’s life to follow news of gold to the Yukon. But with a new century looming, and war on the way, fate will soon throw him in with the criminals and con men that prey on hopeful men like him. And then it will take him much further than that.
The four chapters included here form just one thread of A Moment in the Sun’s first act. Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, John Sayles’s latest novel takes the whole era in its sights—from the white coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in Cuba and the Philippines. Built on the voices of a breathtaking range of exiles in search of opportunity, the full book is a tremendous chronicle of a pivotal time. This is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through the lives of the people who made it happen.
John Sayles’s previous novels include Pride of the Bimbos, Los Gusanos, and the National Book Award–nominated Union Dues. He has directed seventeen feature films, including Matewan, Eight Men Out, and Lone Star, and received a John Cassavetes Award, a John Steinbeck Award, and two Academy Award nominations. His latest film, Amigo, was completed in 2010."
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