The Future
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Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
Catherine Leroux
Catherine Leroux is the author of four highly praised novels and an innovative sequence of short stories. Her first novel, La marche en forêt, was a finalist for Quebec’s Booksellers’ Prize. Her bestselling second novel, Le mur mitoyen, won the France-Quebec Prize, and its translation, The Party Wall, was a finalist for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Leroux’s story sequence, Madame Victoria, won Quebec’s Adrienne Choquette Prize. The Future, championed by Heather O’Neill, won Canada Reads 2024 and was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. The French original of The Future (L’avenir) won the Jacques-Brossard Prize and was a finalist for the Imaginary Horizons Prize and the Quebec Booksellers’ Prize. Catherine Leroux works as a translator and editor in Montreal. She was awarded the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation.
More by Catherine Leroux
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