Bog Queen

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A NEW YORKER AND ESQUIRE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION SCIENCE + LITERATURE SELECTED TITLE

"In this ecologically inflected novel, Agnes, a forensic anthropologist is asked to identify the body of a woman found in an English peat bog . . . the novel alternates between Agnes's life and that of the woman, a Celtic druid . . . Agnes's investigation sparks a new attention to the world around her, and the novel's sensibility mirrors the peat organisms themselves." -- The New Yorker

When Agnes arrives in the peat bogs of Northern England to study an anthropological marvel--an Iron Age body--she isn't expecting the controversy. Peat-cutters are looking to profit from the bog, activists are demanding it be preserved, scientists are clamoring for the next discovery. And then there is the moss itself: a repository of artifacts, with its own dark stories to tell.

Flashing between post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe, Bog Queen brims with ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strengths in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.

Anna North is the author of America Pacifica, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, and the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Outlawed. She is a senior correspondent at Vox and lives in Brooklyn.