Quercus
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2007.
1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond.
In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township – journalists, Hudson’s Bay Company men, trappers, traders – but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it?
One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, and keen murder mystery.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Tyler
Jane Harris
Xiaolu Guo
Kiran Desai
Rachel Cusk
Nell Freudenberger
Melanie Wallace
Anne Tyler
Jane Smiley
Rachel Seiffert
Deborah Robertson
Stef Penney
Catherine O'Flynn
Lisa Moore
Lori Lansens
M.J. Hyland
Jane Harris
Xiaolu Guo
Rebecca Gowers
Margaret Forster
Patricia Ferguson
Kiran Desai
Rachel Cusk
Clare Allan
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Barbara Kingsolver
Ruth Ozeki
Susanna Clarke
Maggie O'Farrell
Tayari Jones
Kamila Shamsie
Naomi Alderman
Lisa McInerney
Ali Smith
Eimear McBride
A.M. Homes
Madeline Miller
Téa Obreht
Barbara Kingsolver
Marilynne Robinson
Rose Tremain
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Lionel Shriver
Andrea Levy
Valerie Martin
Ann Patchett
Kate Grenville
Linda Grant
Suzanne Berne
Carol Shields
Anne Michaels
Helen Dunmore
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