Nominated for the 2020 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a
First Novel. One of The Millions's Most Anticipated Books of the
Second-Half of 2020, one of Library Journal's 35 Standout
Summer/Fall 2020 Debut Novels, and one of Shondaland's 11 New Books That
Will Change How You Think About the Climate Crisis
**
From the author of the story collections Heartbreaker and Rag comes
a powerful and propulsive debut novel that examines activism, love, and
purpose**
When fifteen-year-old Xie moves from California to a rural Southern town
to live with his father he makes just two friends, Jo and Leni, both
budding environmental and animal activists. One night, the three friends
decide to free captive mink from a local farm. But when Xie is the only
one caught his small world gets smaller: Kicked out of high school, he
becomes increasingly connected with nature, spending his time in the
birch woods behind his house, attending extremist activist meetings, and
serving as a custodian for what others ignore, abuse, and discard.
Exploring the woods alone one night, Xie discovers the relic of a
Catholic saint--the martyred Pancratius--in a nearby church. Regal and
dressed in ornate armor, the skeleton captivates him. After weeks of
visits, Xie steals the skeleton, hides it in his attic bedroom, and
develops a complex and passionate relationship with the bones and spirit
of the saint, whom he calls P. As Xie's relationship deepens with P., so
too does his relationship with the woods--private property that will
soon be overrun with loggers. As Xie enacts a plan to save his beloved
woods, he must also find a way to balance his conflicting--and
increasingly extreme--ideals of purity, sacrifice, and responsibility in
order to live in this world.
Maryse Meijer's The Seventh Mansion is a deeply moving and profoundly
original debut novel--both an urgent literary call to arms and an
unforgettable coming-of-age story about finding love and selfhood in the
face of mass extinction and environmental destruction.
