Overview

As a late spring blizzard brews, Brother Christopher, a cloistered monk at Blue Mountain Monastery in Vermont, rushes to tend to his Ida Red and Northern Spy apple trees in advance of the unseasonal snowstorm. When the storm lands a young Somali refugee, Sahro Abdi Muse, at the monastery, Christopher is pulled back into the world as his life intersects with Sahro's and that of an Afghan war veteran in surprising and revealing ways. North traces the epic journey of Sahro from her home in Somalia to South America, along the migrant route through Central America and Mexico, to New York City, and finally, her dangerous attempt to continue north to safety in Canada. It also compellingly traces the inner journeys of Brother Christopher, questioning his future in a world where the monastery way of life is waning, and of veteran Teddy Fletcher, seeking a way to make peace with his past. Written in Brad Kessler's sharp, beautiful, and observant prose, and grounded in the author's own corner of Vermont, where there is a Carthusian monastery, a vibrant community of Somali asylum seekers, and a hole left after a disproportionate number of Vermont soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, North gives voice to these invisible communities, delivering a story of human connection in a time of displacement.

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9781419750427

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Reviews

North is a brave and ambitious novel . . . an intimate yet globe-spanning book that brilliantly combines the personal with the political. Kessler's sensitivity to both the exterior elemental world of northern Vermont and the interior world of our hearts, souls, and minds makes for that rare thing: a book that is as transporting as it is profound. --Peter Cameron author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You North is a powerful, memorable, tender meditation on the fate of immigrants worldwide. My heart skipped many times as I followed the hopes of Sahro Abdi Muse, the Somali protagonist, and the intrigue at the Vermont monastery where a religious community struggles to protect her from dark forces. I love this book. I couldn't put it down. --Uwem Akpan author of Say You're One of Them, winner of the PEN Open Book Award and Oprah Book Club Pick Brad Kessler has an unusual empathy for stories. Original and deliberate in approach, he leans into the heart of difficulty and lets the sheer human dignity of his characters, no matter what duress they are under, lead the story to a hard won but exquisite grace. This book has a distinctive tenor and a voice full of hope. --Chris Abani author of The Secret History of Las Vegas Kessler's suspenseful and compassionate novel North is the emotional compass we clutch as we wander through the inhospitable landscape of our own preconceptions and mental boundaries. --Nora Krug author of Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, winner of the National Book Circle Crit

Author Information

Brad Kessler is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Lick Creek and Birds in Fall, which was a recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a memoir, Goat Song. He has been awarded a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, the Kenyon Review, and BOMB. He lives in Vermont.

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