Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week • One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
"A woman seeking justice in an imagined Detroit discovers resilience and resistance where she least expects they will be found. Looking for answers, and her missing granddaughters, Gloria moves into the house where her daughter was murdered. A stranger in a Fort-Detroit neighborhood coping with the ongoing effects of racial and economic injustice, she finds herself surrounded by poverty, pollution, violence--as well as the resilience of the residents, in whose stubborn generosity and carefully tended gardens she finds hope. When a strange intuition sends her into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city's orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can't imagine the strength she will find. Set in an alternate history in which the French never surrendered the city of Detroit, where children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves, where rivers poison and heal and young and old alike protect with their lives the people and places they love, Catherine Leroux's The Future is a richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future."--
