Gail Anderson-Dargatz won the UK’s Betty Trask Award, the BC Book Prize for Fiction, and the Vancity Book Price for her first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning. Her second novel, A Recipe for Bees, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Spawning Grounds was shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for fiction. Her thriller, The Almost Wife, was a Canadian bestseller, and her other thriller, The Almost Widow, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada. She is visiting Hudson again from her home in BC’s Shuswap region.
In The Atlas Keeper, Elsie Campbell’s life has stalled. Since her mother’s death several years earlier, she has lived in her sister’s basement but has now been asked to leave. She has no real friends, no romance, and spends her days crunching data for her father’s mapping company. All this changes the day after a solar eclipse when Elsie finds an atlas that gives her the power to go back to 12 turning points in her life, as well as to visit the future with unexpected consequences.