Please note that this book is now out of print and unavailable from Tartarus Press.
One Morning
Jessica Hagy
One Morning is a gothic novel that tells the story of Gour Borough, Pennsylvania via the subjective and interwoven perspectives of twelve women who live there.
A middle-aged taxidermist who indulges in arson.
An ailing hostage.
A mother who stopped searching for her lost child.
A disoriented shepherdess.
A feral tween huntress.
An exhausted wife with a secret bank account.
An innocent girl with a bounty on her head.
An untethered orphan.
A gleefully passive murderer.
An underemployed geologist.
A scheming hotel proprietor in a ghoulish costume.
A teenager with a dead pen pal.
Taking place over a single twelve hour time period, the book moves in real time as the characters’ lives intertwine, their fates soaked in and stained by the polluted waters of the long-abandoned coalmines that crumble below their town.
One Morning embodies the phrase, to sonder, that is, to realise that everyone around us leads lives as rich, haunting, and complex as our own.
Reviews:
"Hagy’s fascinating debut novel . . . takes place over 12 hours starting at midnight, with each hour narrated by one of 12 women living in the dying, former coal mining town of Gour Borough, Pa. . . . Each voice is captivating and distinct, and each adds a new level of urgency that leads to the haunting finale. The big mystery is how the stories will intersect and affect one another. This elegantly told and thought-provoking work deserves a wide audience." Publishers Weekly
"It's an astonishing accomplishment, a novel that follows one perception after another to craft a vivid portrait of environmental memory echoing from one decaying life to the next. Disturbing, poignant and alive with the beauty of human struggle trapped in economic runoff, One Morning is a page-turner that ends up haunting the reader." Rick Kleffel, Narrative Species
"The novel’s meticulous construction and its flawless narrative make this a most impressive debut. Warning: Don’t read this book alone in an isolated cabin in the woods." Aurealis #134
Please note: One Morning is a smaller format book than usual, similar to the first printings of The White Hands and Dear Dead Women.
Jessica Hagy is an artist and writer best known for her Webby award-winning webcomic, Indexed and is the author of the illustrated non-fiction books: How to be Fearless, The Humanist’s Devotional, The Art of War Visualized, How to Be Interesting, and Indexed. A prolific fixture in the creative online space, Jessica has been illustrating, consulting, and speaking internationally since 2006. Her work has been described as ‘deceptively simple,’ ‘undeniably brilliant,’ and ‘our favourite reason for the Internet to exist. Her work has been flatteringly featured in Wired, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes, among many others. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Jessica Hagy’s fiction focuses on the weird and uncanny elements of our natural and manufactured culture that hide in plain sight, and questions what it means to be haunted: both chemically and culturally.
She lives on the edge of a saltwater bluff in Hansville, Washington, USA.
Read the first chapter of One Morning by Jessica Hagy here.
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