Crow Lake

The first novel from bestselling, prize-winning Mary Lawson - 'A remarkable novel, utterly gripping...I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it.' Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat

This slow-burning story is set in the rural "badlands" of Northern Ontario, where tragedy and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. It is a universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harboured and driven underground.

After their parents die, the Morrison siblings try to stay together – but one brother’s sacrifice changes them all.

Kate Morrison has spent years away from Crow Lake, the small northern Ontario farming community where her childhood changed in an instant. After her parents died in an accident, she and her siblings clung to one another while trying to remain a family.

Her brilliant brother Matt once seemed destined for a life far beyond the farm. Kate escaped through education and the natural world, but she could not escape the story she had built around Matt’s sacrifice or the neighbouring Pye family’s violence and secrets. Returning home as an adult, she must look again at what she believed she knew.

Crow Lake is a restrained and deeply affecting novel about siblings, rural life, grief, ambition and the cost of survival.

'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler

'A remarkable novel, utterly gripping...I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it' Joanne Harris

'Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner' Observer