Cicada Summer - A Novel

In the summer of 2020, with a heat wave bearing down and a brood of periodical cicadas climbing into the trees, Husha mourns the recent death of her mother while quarantining with her ailing grandfather, Arthur, at his lakeside cabin in remote Ontario. They're soon joined by Husha's ex-lover, Nellie, who arrives without explanation to complete their trio.

Also among them is a strange book, discovered by Husha while cleaning out her mother's house. When she, Arthur and Nellie begin to read it together, they learn that her mother's last missive was a short story collection, crawling with unsettling imagery and terrifying transformations. As the stories bleed into their cloistered life in the cabin, they must each reckon with loss, longing and what it means to truly know another person. Incantatory and atmospheric, Cicada Summer is a dazzlingly original novel about how we grieve and care for one another.

About the author

Erica McKeen is the author of Tear, a novel that won the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for literary fiction, and Cicada Summer. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she works as a teacher and librarian.

Product details

• Authors: Erica McKeen
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.07.2024
• EAN: 9781324073819
• ISBN: 978-1-324-07381-9
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 211 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 268 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Family Life / General, FICTION / Literary, Of specific Gay & Lesbian interest, Family life fiction, Relating to LGBTQ+ people, FICTION / World Literature / Canada / 21st Century, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / General, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary