In writing a novel, every author juggles the demands of creating a story and finding the best way to tell it, hoping for a seamless merging of style and substance. Fleischman is known for the exquisite care he takes in fashioning his prose, focusing on every word—and even every syllable—to achieve a metered, musical quality. Here, the rhythms of nearly every sentence can be scanned, and the author employs such literary techniques as alliteration (the repetition of initial consonant and vowel sounds) and assonance (the repetition of similar vowel sounds in different words.) Seek is a symphony of the spoken word, interpolating dialogue from over four dozen characters into an uninterrupted whole that travels effortlessly from place to place, as well as from the present to the past and back again. Fleischman is able to execute such verbal acrobatics without confusion through...