Vern—seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised—flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past and, more troublingly, the future—outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering not only the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history of America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals but entire nations. This is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

The author

Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. Their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, appeared on the Stonewall Honor Books List, won a Firecracker Award, and was a finalist for Lambda Literary, Hurston/Wright Legacy, and Locus awards. Solomon’s second book, The Deep, based on the song by the Daveed Diggs–fronted hip-hop group clipping., was the winner of a 2020 Lambda Literary Award and was short-listed for Nebula, Locus, Hugo, and numerous other awards. A refugee of the transatlantic slave trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.