North

Kessler Brad Kessler

Description

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist for the Vermont Book Award A powerfully moving novel about the intertwined lives of a Vermont monk, a Somali refugee, and an Afghan war veteran by the author of the acclaimed memoir Goat Song 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.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647001087
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MORE PRAISE FOR NORTH
In Brad Kessler s fine new novel, North . . . the seemingly disparate lives that converge on a snowy Vermont night-Sahro, a Somali refugee seeking asylum, and Father Christopher, the abbot of a mountain monastery-are woven together with intricate threads of home, flight, sanctuary, danger, hope, faith, storytelling, and much more.
-Shelf Awareness
Kessler vividly renders the northern New England setting, a fitting backdrop to this emotive rendering of Sahro s experience. . . . The characters moving stories coalesce into yet another winning effort from a consistently impressive writer.
-Publishers Weekly
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 Critics Circle Award
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
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

This edition first published in paperback in 2022 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS 195 Broadway, 9th floor New York, NY 10007 www.overlookpress.com
Originally published in hardcover by The Overlook Press in 2021
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Copyright 2021 Brad Kessler Cover 2022 Abrams
Reading Group Guide 2022 Abrams
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934972
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5043-4 eISBN: 978-1-64700-108-7
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F OR F ARDUSA AND M OHAMMED
And we made the son of Mary and his mother a sign; and sheltered them on a high peaceful hill, watered by many springs.
The Qur an, Surah 23
I
1
M AY 2017
Christopher Gathreaux shut his computer and pulled on boots. The blizzard wasn t due until evening, but already the skies outside looked ominous and slate blue. A foot of snow lay in the forecast. Ice accumulations. Whiteout conditions. The monastery would probably lose power. A nor easter on the mountain in early May was not unheard of-but its timing could be disastrous. Especially to the apples in the monastery s orchard. A sudden drop in temperature could freeze the tender tips on the apple branches and kill the blossoms before they even bloomed. The whole crop would be ruined-if Christopher did nothing.
He climbed into a wool sweater and watch cap. Out the window the clouds lowered over Blue Mountain. The sky was turning a darker shade of denim each minute. It was only one in the afternoon but looked like twilight. He couldn t wait much longer. He d miss the monks midafternoon prayers-Nones-but hopefully return in time for Vespers. On his way out of the abbot s quarters, he switched off the lamp on his desk and hurried into the hall.
Outside, wind nearly knocked him over. The unleafed woods bent and roared. Bare oaks broomed the sky. Christopher hunched into the gale, hauling a roll of white row cover over one shoulder, a ladder over the other. When he reached the rise into the orchard, his wire-rim glasses were completely fogged, his face numb. Saplings shook in the squall. Ida Reds and Gravensteins. McIntoshes and Northern Spies, their branches already ornate with buds. There were over two hundred apple trees in Blue Mountain Monastery s orchard. Christopher would only be able to cover a few. The monks made cider and apple butter as a way to feed themselves by the labor of their own hands . Yet cultivating anything on Blue Mountain was becoming harder each year, the winters growing too warm, the springs too cold, the weather unpredictable. The monks were aging too, growing too frail for the work. Few new vocations arrived to fill their empty seats. No one wanted to be a monk anymore in the twenty-first century. The long-hoped-for monastic revival the Order envisioned never materialized. Even Father Christopher had to admit: their way of life was dying.
He dropped the roll of row cover on the ground and stood before a Northern Spy sapling. He leaned the ladder into the branches, then shouldered the roll and started to climb. Wind caught the loose end of the cloth and kited it skyward, and Christopher had to reel it in. Then he carefully unwound the fabric clockwise around the tree s crown-as best he could-making a messy cocoon of its upper limbs.
By the time he d used up all the cloth, he d managed to cover only a dozen saplings. He climbed off the ladder and stood in the row to survey his work. The saplings looked mummified, or partly injured, with white cloth flapping around their crowns. His efforts might not amount to much but at least he d tried.
The first snow stung his face. He warmed his hands with his breath, then had the sudden unnerving sense of being watched. When he turned, a towering moose was staring at him from the row. Christopher froze; the hairs rose on the back of his neck. The tall moose wobbled on thin legs a few yards away; she looked skeletal, sick, her bones jutting out beneath a ravaged hide. The moose were dying all over Blue Mountain that year, plagued by ticks kept alive by the warming winters. Christopher had seen their ruined carcasses crawling with ticks along the monastery roads. The calves and older cows succumbed first; this one looked ancient. She could barely stand.
She stared at Christopher in the incipient snow as if asking an unanswerable question. He crossed himself and stepped back. He d leave the moose in peace in the orchard. Perhaps she d make it through the storm. He d pray for her that evening at Vespers, as he prayed each night for all of Creation. It seemed the only thing left for the monks to do: watch the world change . . . and pray.
2
Sahro Abdi Muse waited by the window at the Starbucks on Astor Place. The evening rush was over, the caf thinning out, the streetlights burning orange in the dusk. She sat in a corner by a window with a blue knapsack by her feet and scanned the room for a sign. A nod. A knowing look. A cue someone had come to meet her-but no one looked back. Her driver was already thirty minutes late.
Outside on Astor Place pedestrians scurried past the window. Sahro caught her reflection in the glass-and almost didn t recognize herself: the bulky down coat, the red baseball cap, the new pair of jeans. Gone was her elegant hijab, her olive scarf, the long dirac, replaced with clothes she d hoped would let her fit in. Yet who was she fooling, she wondered, sitting beside the window for all the world to see? Surely someone would notice she didn t belong. The Alien , the Undocumented . The names she d recently learned: Asylee. Terrorist . Haji . Didn t she wear her unbelonging in her eyes? In her narrow face, her walnut skin? In her accent and overstuffed bag? She d positioned her knapsack in front of her feet to hide the most incriminating thing of all. The bulge beneath her right pant leg: an ankle monitor she d been forced to wear since leaving detention.
She eyed the others inside the caf . Mostly young. Mostly White. A few Brown or Black. They looked like college students, staring intently into screens or talking loudly on phones. Sahro searched her own coat pockets before remembering she d scrubbed her messages and e-mails earlier, erased her contacts, removed the battery and SIM card, and packed her phone away. That was the plan. Hide everything. Carry nothing north. Leave no trace behind. Arrive on time inside the Starbucks caf at Astor Place and await the driver-a White woman, an American, whose name she didn t know but who d be wearing, the woman texted, a yellow-colored coat. Their drive would take eight hours, depending on traffic and weather. They d reach Canada before dawn, and sometime the next day-inshallah-Sahro would find herself in Toronto, at Fartumo and Ahmed s friend s apartment on Dixon Road.
She d memorized all the names and numbers (it was safer not to write anything down). The sanctuary people had coached her on the phone. She d texted everyone earlier that afternoon. All was arranged. So why did she feel so anxious, so full of nameless dread? Hadn t she crossed more dangerous borders in harder countries, without the benefit of an escort and private driver? The sanctuary people were her safest option-everyone agreed. Most made it into Canada without a hitch.
-
A teen with spiked purple hair pushed through the caf doors. A White girl in a pink tracksuit. A wave of nausea washed through Sahro. She checked the clock by the counter. She had to call the ICE parole officer in two hours as she had each night for the past few months. What if