Description

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

Publisher Review

Beautifully written, carefully balanced, Mary Lawson constructs a history of sacrifice, emotional isolation and family love without sounding a false note * Daily Mail * Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner * Observer * Lawson's evocative storytelling...knows just how to draw the reader on...this is a novel of disappointed hopes and self-delusion, but it has a feel-good finish. Move over Lake Wobegon * Spectator * A novel of a darkly unpredictable and compelling kind. It is a wise book * Financial Times *