being robbed and killed. Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure. The plot is both a log of the journey and a look into the mind of the narrator, Will. A pseudo-sequel, titled The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water, follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America. This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry: Stories (2004). Different editions In February 2003, Eggers and McSweeney's published Sacrament, a retitled hardcover edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity that included a new 49-page section inserted into the middle of the story. The U.S. trade-paperback edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity! (with an exclamation point added to the title), released later that year by Vintage, includes this new material. The addition, narrated by Hand, calls into question the reliability of the narrator, and, depending on which version is read, You Shall Know Our Velocity can be viewed as two different stories. In Hand's version, their third friend, Jack, never actually existed. Instead, he is a metaphorical representation of Will's mother, a device Will used to cope with the loss that apparently occurred several years before the trip (rather than alive and in contact with Will as in his version). Hand also corrects one of the most startling scenes in Will's version, in which Will breaks down emotionally, claiming that Will was too shy to do such a thing. Hand does say that Will's version was 85% true, though he did hate the title, renaming it "Sacrament". The original version was narrated entirely by Will. In the world of the revised version, Will's memoirs were published six years earlier, and Hand has taken it upon himself to insert his own perspective immediately after the climax of the story. Hand's meta-narrative is entirely self-contained, and it is as much a personal digression as it is a relevant critique of the story as presented by Will. For the hardcover version of You Shall Know Our Velocity, the opening paragraph of the novel is printed directly on the front cover. In Sacrament, Hand alludes to the opening paragraph's being written by a ghostwriter. Film adaptation The book was optioned by Process Productions, with Miguel Arteta attached to direct. Notes External links Additional section from Sacrament and some paperback editions (downloadable in PDF format) 2002 American novels McSweeney's books Postmodern novels Novels by Dave Eggers English-language novels