Lost River 1918
Lost River is the story of the Van Beest family, which inherits a house at the edge of a magical forest where the dead return from the afterlife. When 13-year-old Anne’s mother, a midwife, delivers a stillborn baby and her father, a mortician, accidentally brings that infant back to life, the Van Beests find themselves at the center of a drama that raises questions about the relationship between the living and the dead.
“Lost River is an extraordinary work of art. It is a story of death and rebirth, borrowing from myth and fairy tale, but also conjuring up literary texts from Frankenstein and Dracula, from Southern Gothic to Magical Realism. Yet it remains entirely itself, not quite like anything else I’ve read. The prose is rich and delicate, the characters memorable, the story immersive. It has the feel of an instant classic.” – Anthony McGowan, Carnegie Medal Winner for Lark and Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize YA Judge 2021.
“Lost River is an extraordinary work of art. It has the feel of an instant classic.” – Anthony McGowan, Carnegie Medal Winner for Lark and Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize YA Judge 2021.
“Lost River has the feel of an instant classic.” – Anthony McGowan, Carnegie Medal Winner for Lark and Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize YA Judge 2021.
Faith Shearin won the 2021 Leapfrog Global Young Adult Fiction Prize for her novel Lost River, 1918. Her seven books of poetry include: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Telling the Bees (SFA University Press), Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), Darwin’s Daughter (SFA University Press), and Lost Language (Press 53). Her poems have been read aloud on The Writer’s Almanac and included in American Life in Poetry. She has received awards from Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her essays and short stories have won prizes from, and have appeared in: The Sun, New Ohio Review, The Missouri Review, The Florida Review, and Literal Latte, among others. Her novel Lost River, 1918 won the YA Global Fiction Prize and has been published in the US and UK by Leapfrog/ Can of Worms Press.
