Sometimes when I’m casting around for some logical explanation of how we got here — here being a time when an ex-Olympian finds himself facing felony charges (eventually dropped) over a botched Reflecting Pool job he had nothing to do with, and the president of the United States posts AI-generated images of himself as Elvis, and flaming space debris is hitting Earth at a record pace, and robots are taking all the jobs — I turn to fiction.

Sure, fiction transports you to another place. Sure, it’s an escape hatch. Sure, it casts a dreamy spell that you can slip into for as long as there’s another page to turn, plot to solve, character to love.

But it also invites you to walk in someone else’s shoes and inhabit someone else’s mind and experience someone else’s trials and triumphs. It chips away at your blind spots. It takes someone else’s world — shaped by their wounds, their wisdom, their wonder — and makes it yours for a while. It makes sense of things.

And wow, did I just stumble upon a couple of masterpieces.

Over the past two weeks, I read “Majestic Hills,” former Chicago Tribune journalist Dawn Turner’s fantastic new book, followed by “Yesteryear,” Caro Claire Burke’s trippy, unhinged novel released in April to huge acclaim — “Good Morning America” chose it as........

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