Please join us in celebrating contributor Julie Carrick Dalton’s January 12 release of her debut novel, Waiting for the Night Song.
Carrick’s novel has already made the following lists:
Buzzfeed: 2021 Thriller And Mystery Novels That Sound Incredibly Intriguing
Medium: The Most Exciting Reads Of Winter/Spring 2021
Frolic: The Best 12 Books of Winter
Frolic: The Must-Read Thrillers and Mysteries of 2021
SheReads: 12 Most anticipated books of 2021
Betches: Winter 2020-2021 Reading List
As a journalist, Julie Carrick Dalton’s has published more than a thousand articles in publications including The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Electric Literature, and The Chicago Review of Books. Her debut novel, WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG, launches Jan. 12, 2021 from Tor/Forge Macmillan, to be followed by a second stand-alone, THE LAST BEEKEEPER, in 2022. A Tin House alum, 2021 Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conference Fellow, and graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator, Julie holds a master’s in literature and creative writing from Harvard Extension School. She is the winner of the William Faulkner Literary Competition and was a finalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature and the Caledonia Novel Award. She is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on the topic of Fiction in the Age of Climate Crisis. Mom to four kids and two dogs, Julie also owns and operates an organic farm in rural New Hampshire, the backdrop for her debut.
“Julie Carrick Dalton’s deftly constructed, urgent yet slow-burning debut novel reads like a warning from the frontlines of our rapidly deteriorating natural world. What begins as a story about a terrible childhood secret buried in a small New England town soon expands into a meditation on the myriad ways we have failed our planet, and the repercussions of that failure. The burning forests and invasive species that plague the New Hampshire of this novel are, for now, mostly fictional, but the trajectory of our present state — a trajectory from which WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG extrapolates — is not.” — Omar El Akkad, American War
Thank you, Julie, for joining us today to answer a few questions about your upcoming title!
Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?
Cadie Kessler, a forestry researcher, is in the middle of trying to head off a potential wildfire when she gets a panicked message from her long-estranged childhood friend, Daniela, after a body is discovered in the woods where they played as kids. Cadie rushes home, where she and Daniela must acknowledge the traumatic childhood secret that drove them apart decades earlier. As Cadie and Daniela confront their past, they come face to face with truths about themselves they don’t want to see, and Cadie must decide what she’s willing to risk to protect the people and the forest she loves. WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG is a portrait of friendship, secrets, and betrayal, a love song to the natural world, a call to fight for what we believe in, and a reminder that the truth will always rise.
Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?