The celestials by Karen Shepard new book

"The Celestials is a time travel machine, a book so completely transporting that I was absorbed not just into its depiction of nineteenth-century New England, but into the bodies, hearts, and minds of its unforgettable characters. Shepard lays bare the secret fears, unconscious prejudices, and 'the ferocity of desire of an entire community. It's a masterful, polyphonic reconstruction, not only of a vanished landscape but also of extinct ways of seeing and relating to the world. Every page held me rapt, and I'm still marveling at the craft and the compassion of this exquisite novel." -KAREN RUSSELL, author of Swamplandia and Vampires in the Lemon Grove "The Celestials feels like a found antique music box whose foreign and wondrous tune was lost to us, until Karen Shepard reanimated the rare characters for whom its magic was marvelously familiar. The tender detail and social drama of this special book will be the song you want to hear again and again!" -RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Atmospheric Disturbances