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Near future: A man visits a couple on a remote farm and offers them an interesting proposition…
Near future: A man visits a couple on a remote farm and offers them an interesting proposition…
Long-married couple Junior and Henrietta live a quiet, solitary life on their farm, where they work at the local feed mill and raise chickens. Their lives are simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.
Until the day a stranger arrives at their door with alarming news: Junior has been chosen to take an extraordinary journey, a journey across both time and distance, while Hen remains at home. Junior will be gone for years. But Hen won’t be left alone.
As the time for his departure draws nearer, Junior finds himself questioning everything about his life – even whether it’s really his life at all.
This novel is vague on locations and setting. The couple in the book live on a very remote farm in the middle of nowhere. They never get visitors. Until the day they do. And it’s a visitor they will never forget.
“We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.”
The farmhouse is in the midst of genetically modified canola fields. The sense of remoteness, claustrophobia and isolation are palpable. This is the setting in the near future when driverless cars are the reality and the norm. There are not mere farms but ‘mega farms’, where it is against the law to own livestock. When you are offered the chance to get away from all this, would you take it?
The literary equivalent of The Island
Destination: American Midwest Author/guide: Iain Reid Departure Time: The near future
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