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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
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IN THE UPPER COUNTRY
The fates of two unforgettable womenone just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital actintertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.
Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by refugees from the slaveowning states of the American southwhose agents do not always stay on their side of the border.
One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned.
But Cash doesn't want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and of the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border.
As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed not only about the complicated tapestry of her nation, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny.
Sweeping along the path of the Underground Railroad from the southern States to Canada, through the lands of Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black communities of southern Ontario, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
Kai Thomas is a graduate of University of Guelph's Creative Writing MFA, for which the manuscript of In the Upper Country was his thesis work. He has worked on the land in various capacities: building, small-scale farming, outdoor educating, planting trees. His writing stems from those experiences. He is Afro-Canadian, born and raised in Ottawa, descended from Trinidad and the British isles. In the Upper Country is his first novel, he is at work on his next.
One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned.
But Cash doesn't want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and of the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border.
As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed not only about the complicated tapestry of her nation, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny.
Sweeping along the path of the Underground Railroad from the southern States to Canada, through the lands of Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black communities of southern Ontario, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
Kai Thomas is a graduate of University of Guelph's Creative Writing MFA, for which the manuscript of In the Upper Country was his thesis work. He has worked on the land in various capacities: building, small-scale farming, outdoor educating, planting trees. His writing stems from those experiences. He is Afro-Canadian, born and raised in Ottawa, descended from Trinidad and the British isles. In the Upper Country is his first novel, he is at work on his next.
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Book
Published by Viking USA |