Available now in Canada, and forthcoming October 10, 2023 in the U.S., with Nightwood Editions. To locate Burr at an independent bookstore in Canada near you, click here.

Cover: Angela Yen

Voiced with plaintive urgency and macabre sensuality, Brooke Lockyer’s debut is a bold and lyrical ’90s-era Gothic about holding on to the dead.

In the small town of Burr, Ontario, thirteen-year-old Jane yearns to reunite with her recently deceased father and fantasizes about tunnelling through the earth to his coffin. This leads her to bond with local eccentric Ernest, who is still reeling from the long-ago drowning of his little sister. Jane’s mother, Meredith, escapes into wildness, building a sanctuary of memory in the middle of the forest—that is, until her daughter’s disappearance spurs her into action.

The voice of the town conveys the suspicions and subliminal fears of a rural community—a chorus of whispers that reaches a fever pitch when Jane and Ernest disappear from Burr together. Mixing realism and the fantastic, Burr investigates the nature of grief that reaches beyond the grave.

Praise for Burr

“Original. Exquisitely written. Lockyer takes her story of a young girl dealing with the death of her father in directions that foil your expectations, turning a painful world of loss and mourning into a celebration of life. Utterly charming.”–Rosemary Sullivan, author of The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

“Gentle, wise and beautifully weird: this is a novel which takes seriously the spooky and tender dimensions of grief and our imagined afterlives…”–Gail Jones, author of Five Bells

“This is a magical novel, death-obsessed yet thrumming with life, wondrously attuned to tender and unexpected connection. I loved it! Brooke Lockyer writes like a dream. Every sentence made me see the world newly. Read Burr and be transformed.”–Catherine Bush, author of Blaze Island and The Rules of Engagement