STEAL THE NORTH

STEAL THE NORTH is a story about love and heartache, tragedy and redemption, and an incisive look into class and race in a part of the country where the age-old tensions of cowboys vs. Indians still play out.

When shy and sheltered Emmy Nolan is sent far north for the summer to the scablands of eastern Washington to participate in an old-fashioned faith healing ceremony for an ill relative she doesn't remember meeting, her life changes irrevocably. She immediately loves the aunt and uncle she’s never known, whose lives are confined and dictated by the strict fundamentalist church they attend, but whose spirits are never crushed. She also falls in love with the stark landscape and with Reuben Tonasket, the Native American next-door neighbor. Reuben’s confidence, friendship, and love help Emmy unravel the mysteries of the past and face the tragedies of the present. We see their stories mirrored by the generation before them, who fear that their own mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves in Emmy and Reuben. Heather Brittain Bergstrom has won fiction awards from the Atlantic Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, Narrative Magazine and others, and has been published by The Best American Short Stories 2010 and several literary journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She is from eastern Washington and now resides in northern California.