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.
