For Immediate Release
Contact: [email protected]
Three people in the same northern city of Duluth, Minnesota, are vanishing in different ways in The Sturgeon’s Heart by Amy E. Casey, a genre-blurring monster story forthcoming from Gibson House Press on April 5, 2022.
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.
“Eschewing the usual hyperbolic ramblings that often accompany the ‘discovery’ of a new literary talent, let me instead introduce an alluringly original new voice in fantasy/fiction. In The Sturgeon’s Heart by Amy E. Casey, the inner workings of a young man’s body suddenly become visible through his skin, and the start of his nightmare draws two women on the run from their past lives together in a darkly sensual tale that comprises equal parts David Lynch and The Shape of Water. 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
About the author: 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 is her first novel.
Gibson House Press connects literary fiction with curious and discerning readers by fostering and promoting individual writers and their work. A traditional publisher with trade distribution through PGW, Gibson House Press publishes excellent books from both working musicians and musicians at heart. The press is based in Chicago.
Gibson House Press; dist. by PGW
North American release: April 5, 2022
$16.95 US/$22.95 CAN; Paperback
ISBN: 9781948721165; simultaneous e-book release, 9781948721172
Fiction/Literary; Fiction/Magical Realism
Page Count: 198
Trim size: 5.5” x 8.5”
LCCN: 2021938685