Pale Shadows

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTIONFEATURED ONLITHUBCBC BOOKS:2024 SPRING FICTION PREVIEWDickinson after her death: a novel of the trio of women who brought Emily Dickinsons poems out of the shadowsWhen she died, Emily Dickinson left behind hundreds of texts scribbled on scraps of paper. She also left behind three formidable women: her steadfast sister, Lavinia; her brothers ambitious mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd; and his grief-stricken wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. With no clear instructions from Emily, these three women would, through mourning and strife, make from those scraps of paper a book that would change American literature.From the author ofPaper Houses, this is the improbable, almost miraculous, story of the birth of a book years after the death of its author. In these sensitive and luminous pages, Dominique Fortier explores, through Dickinsons poetry, the mysterious power that books have over our lives, and the fragile and necessary character of literature.