AFTER ALICE

After retiring from the heady world of academia, Sidonie von Taeler has returned to the small Okanagan Valley town she escaped in her youth for the lights of the big city. The family orchard has since gone to seed, and even decades later Sidonie still finds herself living in the shadow of her deceased older sister Alice.

As she gets down to work sifting through the detritus of her family's legacy, Sidonie is haunted by memories of trauma and triumph in equal measure, and must find a way to reconcile her past and present while reconnecting with the family members she has left.

Karen Hofmann's debut novel blends a poetic sensibility with issues of land stewardship, social stratification and colonialism, painting the geological and historical landscape of the Okanagan in vivid and varied colours.

Karen Hofmann has been published in Arc, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and The Fiddlehead. Her book Water Strider was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize at the 2009 BC Book Awards, and “The Burgess Shale” was shortlisted at the 2012 CBC Short Fiction Contest. After Alice is her first novel.