Garner
A debut novel by Kirstin Allio

A Lit Blog Co-op Read This! Selection

"Exceptional."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Nathaniel Hawthorne knew all about what happens when an individual's obligations to history and community meet a repressed passion. In Kirstin Allio's strange, startling and beautifully written first novel, Hawthorne may have found a worthy 21st century heir to his dark, evocative fable-making about that most American of locations, New England."—Rebecca Brown

Garner, New Hampshire is a town delineated by its Puritan ethics and its "Live Free or Die" mentality. In 1925, Garner's economic prospects are in decline and a group of young, wealthy New Yorkers descend on Frances Giddens's family farm for summer leisure. As Frances, a spirited, elusive girl born at the dawn of the twentieth century, is drawn to the romance the newcomers represent, darker forces are unleashed. When her body is found in rain-swollen Blood Brook, this deeply private community begins to unravel. As the story unfolds, Allio's beautiful, atmospheric prose reveals the town's hidden history and the fierce longings locked in the hearts of its citizens.