The Second History
Born in a barren future world devastated by climate change, Eban has lived in hiding all his life without ever understanding why. After his mother’s death, he retreated into the northern Appalachians with Judy, the only other woman he has ever known.
But as the years passed and Judy suffered multiple miscarriages, she began to wonder what happened to the cities their parents fled, where a strange sickness is said to have spread among those who stayed behind.
Seeking answers, Judy and Eban now set out to find the fabled colony of the original mountain settlers. Along the way, the people they encounter and the secrets they uncover will threaten their lives and the ties between them, further complicating what they know of the world beyond the mountains and of each other.
A novel of haunting beauty and suspense, The Second History is a post-apocalyptic love story about a young couple embarking on a journey to understand, for the first time, what they’ve been hiding from all their lives. It is a story about the limits of our ability to know each other or understand the past . . . and about the courage it takes to invent the world again for those we love.
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RELEASE DATE: August 3, 2021
In the Land of Birdfishes
This remarkable novel about myth-making and survival opens in rural Nova Scotia, where two sisters witness the suicide of their wild, beautiful mother. Their father, sick with grief, blindfolds the children to shield them from the misery of the world. Left that way for years, they are each scarred in their own way: Mara is rendered fully blind, and Aileen partly so. When a neighbour discovers their condition, they are immediately separated for treatment, and it isn’t until decades later, after Aileen’s marriage has fallen apart, that she decides to seek out her lost sister. She heads to Dawson City, Yukon, where Mara is said to be living, but instead finds Mara’s angry young son, Jason.
Soon Aileen has insinuated her way into the hard-drinking, hard-living existence of Dawson City’s residents, from whom she hears various conflicting stories about her sister. When the novel shifts to Jason’s perspective, the reader starts to understand the nature of these stories and the underlying secrets that compel their creation.
Engaging and deeply moving, In the Land of Birdfishes builds inevitably to a shocking and heartbreaking conclusion.