Three people in the same northern city of Duluth, Minnesota, are vanishing in different ways.
“The writing is exquisite. . . . Wonderful characters, beautiful plotting, and a dramatic finale add up to a splendid novel.”—ALA Booklist
“Every page contains a sentence that should make you gasp with joy, and the story is as thrilling as the prose.”—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
“Casey does not shy away from flawed characters, but renders them honestly, tenderly, and without cynicism. The Sturgeon’s Heart is intricate and beautiful. It made me long to see the shores of Lake Superior.”—Cole Nagamatsu, author of We Were Restless Things
“Quietly powerful and gorgeously written, The Sturgeon’s Heart flickers and twists before your eyes, luring characters together in unexpected ways. This is a moving and elegant debut.”—Valerie Laken, author of Dream House and Separate Kingdoms
“I loved the poetic weirdness and stark sense of place in this gutsy first novel, from the first fluid transformations to the somber realism of the conclusion.”—Peter Robertson, author of Conclusion.
The Sturgeon’s Heart startles from the beginning of this visionary debut novel.
Howard Wright finds his skin turning transparent, revealing the bloody workings of musculature beneath. His body becomes otherworldly and insistent, spinning him into visions that echo trauma from his childhood. Sarah Turnsfield is living under an assumed identity, on the run from her past as a meteoric scientific prodigy. Content to work as a grocery clerk, she is determined to live a life on her own terms, where the landscape of her mind is hers alone. Jo Breckmier seeks a new start in Duluth after a bitter divorce. She moves into the apartment unit across from Howard’s, leaning on alcohol and a stubborn will to reinvent herself. The woods and the lake seem to call to her as she laments her shipwrecked life.
When instinct, the swiftly warming spring, and Howard’s monstrous body conspire to bring the three together, each will discover how long they can hide—Jo from her loneliness, Sarah from her rising paranoia, and Howard from his intensifying transformation. On one remarkable night along the rugged shore of Lake Superior, the lines between reality and legend intersect. Identities are broken and remade. In this contemporary monster story, the earth itself amplifies both the grotesque and the beautiful.
Amy E. Casey lives and writes in Wisconsin, near the cold freshwater shore of Lake Michigan. From there, she dreams up stories of quiet monsters and wild landscapes. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in Split Rock Review, Psaltery & Lyre, Club Plum, NonBinary Review, Bramble, and elsewhere. She does a large portion of her writing on a Smith Corona Classic 12 manual typewriter from 1964. The Sturgeon’s Heart, her first novel, won honorable mention as Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year.
Pub Date: April 5, 2022
Price: $16.95 US/$22.95 CAN
Binding: Original Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781948721165 (paper); 9781948721172 (ebook)
Category: Fiction/Literary; Fiction / Magical Realism
Page Count: 198
Trim size: 5.5” x 8.5”
LCCN: 2021938685
Trade distributor: Publishers Group West (PGW)
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Publicity contact: Mary Bisbee-Beek, [email protected]