Bainbridge Island, Washington, novelist Jonathan Evison’s “Again and Again” weaves together narratives as its protagonist leads different lives through time.

Jonathan Evison, the Bainbridge Island, Washington, novelist who has brought us the humane and tragicomic stories of Ben and Trev in “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving,” Harriet Chance in “This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!” and a cast of dozens sprawling across two centuries in “Small World” — is back with a new novel that employs his usual empathy, curiosity and humor.

In “Again and Again,” readers’ interest will be piqued by the unusual assertions made on the first page of the first chapter.

By the second page, there’s no turning back — you’ll be pulled into the fantastical tale that Evison has woven between 10th century al-Andalus, 19th century London, Southern California in the 21st century — and many points in between.

The entire book is narrated from a first-person point of view by Eugene Miles, or rather by the different characters his soul has inhabited throughout more than 1,000 years.

This week’s book

“Again and Again” by Jonathan Evison

Dutton — 336 pp — $28

As Euric, a desperate pickpocket who roamed the streets of Seville during the Moorish rule of the Iberian Peninsula, he found — and lost — his first love, Gaya.

In the 1,100 years since, it seems he has been reincarnated several times, and always resumes the search for his lost love.

But the reader first encounters Eugene as an old geezer living in an assisted living facility in a desert community outside of Los Angeles. He has no relatives who come to visit, and occasionally he has to fend off unwelcome overtures by the facility’s mental health professional, Wayne, to engage him in conversation or activities with the other residents.

Instead, he prefers to while away his lonely hours with his sparse collection of history books, jigsaw puzzles and regrets.

It isn’t until a new housekeeper comes through every day to empty his wastebasket and spruce the room up, that Eugene Miles experiences a change of heart.

Angel is a young Chicano, who is trying to get past the problems he has already made for himself as an aimless teen.

Perhaps Eugene sees a little of Euric in Angel. Despite himself, he finds himself offering counsel to Angel.

All the nursing home staff is privy to Mr. Miles and his claim to have lived many lives, and almost everybody puts that down as delusional.

But as the relationship between Eugene and Angel gradually becomes more mutually trusting, Angel asks his new mentor to tell him more about his past lives, and Eugene finds himself unspooling his stories bit by bit, “Scheherazade”-style, every afternoon when Angel comes in to conduct his daily cleaning routine. It is a relief to be able to share his pent-up feelings of enduring love and loss and grief.

Like Angel, the reader will be alternately enthralled and appalled by the many different stories Eugene relates in such precise detail. But is the narrator reliable?

As the revelations stack up in “Again and Again,” Angel, the careful reader and even Eugene himself will discover that the stories’ underlying truths do endure, across time and miles. What a heartwarming read.