Days Between Stations is the first novel by Steve Erickson. Upon publication in 1985 it received notable praise from Thomas Pynchon^[1] and has been cited as an influence by novelists such as Jonathan Lethem and Mark Z. Danielewski.

It has been translated into French,^[2] Spanish,^[3] Italian,^[4] Russian,^[5] Polish and Japanese.^[6]

Lauren and Jason are a young newlywed Kansas couple living in San Francisco. Jason, a cyclist training for the 1972 Summer Olympics, does not come home for the birth of his son, Jules—but fathers an illegitimate son and spends the subsequent year away. Dazed by Jason's decision, Lauren leaves the infant Jules and wanders Los Angeles alone, where a stranger with a severe stutter shelters her overnight. Lauren returns home, losing all memory of that night. Jules later develops a stutter, and dies at nine years of age.

At the same time, the stranger, Michel Sarasan, wakes up amnesiac, and no longer stuttering. Staying with his estranged uncle, Michel learns that he had older twin brothers who died young, and rediscovers his own student film, made as "Michel Sarre", documenting the life of his mother in France. He subconsciously calls himself "Adrien" by accident.

Michel moves in downstairs from Lauren and Jason in Los Angeles; he and Lauren recognize each other but cannot remember the circumstances. Jason openly commits many adulteries, but only feels threatened for the first time by Michel's presence. While Jason is away, Michel, trespassing, finds Lauren suffering from ectopic pregnancy just in time for life-saving surgery. Lauren falls in love with Michel, perceiving a dichotomy of two people in him.

In 1900, twin baby boys are abandoned in Paris, and one is taken in at a luxurious, private brothel. Named Adolphe de Sarre, the boy grows up alongside Janine, daughter of one of the brothel girls by the owner. When Janine is deflowered by the owner's lecherous adult son, Adolphe throws him out a window in lustful jealousy, and is forced to flee.

After serving in World War I, Adolphe watches The Birth of a Nation, intuitively developing auteurist filmmaking ideas. He writes his own film, La Morte de Marat (The Death of Marat), dramatizing the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. Selling the ambitious script to a studio, Adolphe becomes director without any experience, relying on a sympathetic crew. Filming in the backwater village of Wyndeaux, he hires Janine—who has escaped the brothel—to play Charlotte Corday, while romancing her. An old sailor gives Janine a cognac bottle containing two living, disembodied blue eyes, but she loses the bottle.

Despite short-lived hype, Marat is plagued by controversy and delay. After losing studio support, Adolphe sells Janine back to the brothel for funding. Janine bears two children by Adolphe, who would become Michel's uncle and mother. Adolphe suppresses Marat for decades, in contrition; finally rediscovered, it garners an ambivalent reception.

The amorous Lauren and Michel travel to Paris, where Lauren puts off confronting an increasingly anxious Jason in Vienna. Michel nearly finds his grandfather while investigating his past, but subconsciously sabotages himself. On board the houseboat of "Bateau Billy", Adolphe's lost twin, Lauren briefly makes peace with the loss of Jules when she finds the bottled eyes, only to lose them. She sails to Vienna; Michel follows by train, but, while departing Wyndeaux, is trapped on board in an unending time loop. Through a window, he witnesses Billy impregnating his mother decades ago. His late brothers appear, beckoning him to view more scenes of his ancestry.

Jason grapples with his failed marriage and medal prospects, and finally confronts the loss of Jules. Lauren arrives in time for his last race, where all racers DNF, lost in a thick fog. Michel finally arrives, his hair and eyes aged by experiencing many decades on the train, refusing his brothers all the while. Faced with Lauren's love of Michel, Jason desperately promises to be faithful. Though Jason has lost her love, Lauren, foreseeing that Michel will resent her surgically-induced infertility, and understanding that Jason shares her regret over Jules, stays by Jason's side to Michel's dismay.

In Wyndeaux, Michel exhumes his brothers' graves, finding them empty. His stutter returns, and he struggles to call out to Lauren. A letter from Adolphe, which never finds Michel, reveals that Michel's mother bore not two deceased sons, but only one—named Adrien.

Michel never returns, and Lauren lives amicably with Jason until one day he is killed in a bombing. Returning to Kansas, Lauren becomes a teacher for neurodivergent children, never remarrying, and never forgetting Michel, into her old age. One night, a student, Kara, unearths the bottled eyes, now appearing very old and saddened.

The Death of Marat appears again or is alluded to in Erickson's novels Amnesiascope and Zeroville,^[7] and several of the characters that Erickson writes about here also appear in other works including Tours of the Black Clock, Arc d'X and The Sea Came in at Midnight.

Reviewing the book, Michael Ventura of the Austin Chronicle wrote: "Erickson is brilliant. Period."^[8]