A haunting, evocative story about the energy of storytelling

A brutal civil war has ravaged the united states, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated hill valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been decreased to barter and trade.

With this craggy, unwelcoming globe, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living in the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She enables a migrant group referred to as the about Scribe: A Book Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy serenity with her cagey neighbours and the local enforcer. She’s learned steps to make paper and ink, and she has become known on her behalf letter-writing abilities, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and additional scarce resources. A unique request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the spirits of her stressed past and sets off some increasingly calamitous events that culminate within a harrowing trip to a crossroads.

Sketching on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy provides crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted book that details on pressing concerns of our period―migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism―and makes a compelling case for the energy of stories to both show us the world and transform it.