Quinnehtukqut

Set in a region of northern New Hampshire that for several years in the 1830s declared itself an independent nation, Joshua Harmon's debut novel traces the real and imagined travels of Martha Hennessy, a girl wishing for a life beyond her family s farm. In language as varied and musical as the Connecticut River the title invokes, Quinnehtukqut interweaves Martha's story with those of the dreamers and drifters whose lives intersect hers: an American soldier scarred by the first World War, a mythical and murderous tramp seeking lost Indian gold, a man haunted by his memories of Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica, an industrialist longing to become a woodsman, and an old woman forced to leave her home due to the planned flooding of a valley. Elegiac and lyrical, evocative and visionary, Quinnehtukqut reveals how people inhabit place and how place inhabits people through its vivid study of the New England landscape.


Genre: General Fiction

"Joshua Harmon has written a wonderful first novel, austere and beautiful, daringly original, and deeply mysterious, like history itself." - David Means