Into That Darkness

Acclaimed Canadian poet Steven Price has conjured a stunning debut novel that marks the arrival of an exceptionally talented young writer. Set in the city of Victoria, British Columbia, Into That Darkness opens at the moment when a massive earthquake hits the entire west coast with devastating results. With the city destroyed, survivors are left to negotiate a veritable hell on earth in which bonds of civility are pushed to their limits and often broken. Arthur Lear emerges from the rubble only to descend into another disaster zone as he desperately tries to save a mother and her son trapped beneath broken concrete. After an agonizing rescue operation, they emerge only to begin a harrowing searching for the mother's lost daughter. As they wander through scenes redolent of Dante's Inferno and Hieronymus Bosch, their very sense of humanness is tested and compromised, and they are changed forever by their traumatic experiences and their long journey home. Here is a novel for our age of anxiety and end times, a novel that reflects back to us our deepest fears and strongest hopes in the face of impossible odds. Steven Price delivers a powerful story about the physical manifestation of the darker things lurking in our culture, and in ourselves.