The Odd Shelf

Auguste Francois Biard, Magdalena Bay 1840

Lois is an outgoing librarian in a small southern town who hates to travel and has worked hard to have a spectacularly normal life. But the arctic dreams she’s pushed herself to ignore are starting to push back. Jack has long left normal behind, along with his sensible job researching memory in mice. He’s in a professional free fall, following the images in his head to the Arctic ... and, ultimately, to Lois.
 
As Lois and Jack’s stories spiral into each other, Alex and Lena MacDonald's parallel tale is told in haunting flashback as an epistolary romance. The strength of their connection is dragging their ancestors through snow and ice to uncover the truth: Sometimes who we are is less important than who we were, and who we were stays with us—ghosts in our machine—encoded in our DNA.

Excerpt from The Odd Shelf ~

It’s hard even now to believe that I am here and you are not. Hard to understand that the stars are wild and bright in the firmament & you are not here to share them. Hard to know I will not watch as our child grows inside you.  I remind myself of all the reasons we chose to part, but I cannot help but wonder ... what kind of man leaves his beloved so.

This night, I know I am a monster, a wretch, a fiend. And yet, I hope if I must be so, then you and I … “shall be monsters together, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

Your most Beloved Monster,
 John