The Other Shore by Rebecca Campbell

A transformative west coast focused short story collection from Ursula K Le Guin Prize winner Rebecca Campbell.

“Campbell follows her Ursula K. LeGuin Award–winning novella Arboreality with this insightful and impressive collection of 10 genre-defying stories centered on “possibility and transformation, even in pain.” The tales approach the theme of how humanity has arrived at this precarious point in history—and where it can go from here—from several surprising angles. The fairy story “Lares Familiares 1981,” for example, is really about the decline of the Canadian logging industry as experienced by the dysfunctional Thorne family of loggers. Changing tacks entirely, the spine-tingling “The Bletted Woman” follows a widow with early-onset dementia who agrees to join a study that allows just-barely-alive corpses to fuse with natural surroundings, giving humans the potential to communicate with the plant world. The staggering “Conclusion: An Incomplete Catalogue of Miraculous Births, or, Secrets of the Uterus Abscondita” provides a grand finale, examining the strange and mundane miracle of birth through historical oddities like Mary Toft, birther of rabbits, and historical monstrosities like the atom bomb. Throughout, the author’s story notes provide fascinating context. This thought-provoking, wide-ranging collection stuns.” – Publishers Weekly starred review

“A landmark first collection from an extraordinary writer. Like an autoharpist from the hills, Campbell makes a high lonesome sound all her own.” — Andy Duncan, three-time World Fantasy Award winner

“The Other Shore blends rich gothic lyricism with keen ecological awareness. These brilliant stories unsettle, dissolve, and refashion what we thought we knew of the world in the Anthropocene and our place within it. Layered and metatextual, they reveal both deep skill and profound environmental consciousness. Rebecca Campbell is a remarkable writer.” — Jenna Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees

“Reading Rebecca Campbell’s The Other Shore feels like the literary version of listening to a concept album.”— Gabino Iglesias for Locus Magazine

Customers outside of CA/US: due to supply chain issues, worldwide shipping of print books is currently slow and expensive. We recommend shopping with your local indie bookstore. If you do order a print book from us, it will be shipped from the closest print facility to you and will therefore be printed on standard paper and will not include the goodies we send with CA/US orders.