Burr

A 90s-era Southern Ontario Gothic about holding on to the dead, voiced with plaintive urgency and macabre sensuality.

In the small town of Burr, Ontario, thirteen-year-old Jane yearns to reunite with her recently deceased father and fantasizes about tunnelling through the earth to his coffin. This leads her to bond with local eccentric Ernest, who is still reeling from the long-ago drowning of his little sister. Janes mother, Meredith, escapes into wildness, enacting the past on the abandoned bed that she finds in the middle of the forest, until her daughters disappearance spurs her into action.

The voice of the town conveys the suspicions and subliminal fears of a rural communitya chorus of whispers that reaches a fever pitch when Jane and Ernest disappear from Burr together. Throughout, the novel is haunted by Henry, a former wrestler who once stood on his bed in the middle of the night, holding up the weight of the ceiling in his sleeping hands.

Mixing realism and the fantastic, Brooke Lockyers debut novel investigates the nature of grief and longing that reach beyond the grave.