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by Eleanor Shearer
A gripping novel of two young women fighting for survival on the edge of the wilderness, and the love that simultaneously sustains them and threatens their very existence, from the author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick River Sing Me Home.
Nova Scotia, 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her. Until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.
Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.
Deep among the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes's past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom—and of love....
With evocative prose and immersive storytelling, Fireflies in Winter is a powerful novel about love—love for the wilderness in all its unforgiving beauty, and love between two women who risk everything to be together.
"Beautiful... Shearer thoroughly grounds her story in the realistic details of a history most readers won't be familiar with, and she conveys the joys and dangers of life in Nova Scotia, where humpback whales leap in the ocean and bear attacks can be fatal. It's a subtle and morally complex depiction of the price of freedom." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Powerful... combines vividly drawn characters with an emotionally engrossing narrative that explores both the power of love and the difficult choices sometimes required to survive." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Both a fascinating examination of the cost of freedom and a moving account of love outside society's expectations... [A] triumph of spare but powerful storytelling." —Booklist
"Fireflies in Winter is simply luminous. Eleanor Shearer powerfully explores the fragile spaces in history where Black citizens negotiate freedom, the harsh choices frequently forced upon them, and the powerful force of love within those spaces. A book to treasure." —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Briar Club
"Lyrical, luminous, subtle and moving. A story of resilience in an unforgiving world, as starkly beautiful as a northern winter." —Fiona Valpy, bestselling author of The Dressmaker's Gift
"Captivating. Eleanor Shearer returns with a memorable tale of two young women yearning for home and love. I was drawn to the historical setting not typically seen in fiction – the lives of eighteenth-century Jamaican Maroons, removed to Canada, free on paper, yet still at risk." —Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Good Dirt
This information about Fireflies in Winter was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. For her master's degree in politics at the University of Oxford, Eleanor studied the legacy of slavery and the case for reparations.
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