It's 1907, and a terrible snow storm rages across the Midwest, burying a rural community but also revealing its citizens' closely guarded secrets. Two farm families - the Johnsons and the Fryes - struggle while their women fight to give birth during the storm. The only midwife must decide which mother and which baby to help, if she is able to make it through the deepening snow at all. The difficult and dangerous births force a host of people to risk going out in the storm, which has turned the familiar countryside into a strange and confusing landscape. Meanwhile, the snow storm has emboldened a band of coyotes that normally stays close to the mysterious and forbidding Hollis Woods, where thirty years before the Hollis children disappeared one by one without a trace. Their ghosts haunt the woods still, say locals. But it turns out everyone has a past that haunts them, and the relentless storm provides the perfect canvas for painting memories and images best left forgotten. The Strophes of Job is a prequel to multi-award-winning Crowsong for the Stricken, a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2017 ("strange and beautiful," starred review).
It's 1907, and a terrible snow storm rages across the Midwest, burying a rural community but also revealing its citizens' closely guarded secrets. Two farm families - the Johnsons and the Fryes - struggle while their women fight to give birth during the storm. The only midwife must decide which mother and which baby to help, if she is able to make it through the deepening snow at all. The difficult and dangerous births force a host of people to risk going out in the storm, which has turned the familiar countryside into a strange and confusing landscape. Meanwhile, the snow storm has emboldened a band of coyotes that normally stays close to the mysterious and forbidding Hollis Woods, where thirty years before the Hollis children disappeared one by one without a trace. Their ghosts haunt the woods still, say locals. But it turns out everyone has a past that haunts them, and the relentless storm provides the perfect canvas for painting memories and images best left forgotten. The Strophes of Job is a prequel to multi-award-winning Crowsong for the Stricken, a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2017 ("strange and beautiful," starred review).