This collection of three novellas is set in distinct, unnamed locations over a winter, a day and a week. Each story revolves around a small group of central characters forced to depend on one another when faced with unexpected circumstances. In all the stories the past weighs heavily on the present.

“The Spit” opens with runaway teens Felix and Luc lost on a dark, snowy night in a small town. A couple offers them work and a place to stay. By winter’s end the four face life-changing decisions. In “The Sound”, a woman who has chosen to live in isolation questions her decision when a girl shows up at her door dripping wet and carrying a newborn baby. In “The Nest”, sisters Alice and Edna struggle to make sense of adult lives and cruelties after the housekeeper tells them their parents have died in an accident.

Reviews

"The writing in this glorious triptych of stories is as you’d expect from a poet of Sowerby’s talent — concise, evocative and seductive. In these stories, children are protectors and threats, strangers are family, and the ordinary is rendered full of risk. I could spend quite some time in the thrilling comfort of Sowerby’s prose. Savour this book — a compact, rich gem." — Elizabeth Reeder

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