After And The Birds Rained Down, a stunning meditation on aging and freedom, Jocelyne Saucier is back with her unique outlook on self-determination in this unsettling story about a woman's disappearance.

Gladys might look old and frail, but she is determined to finish her life on her own terms. And so, one September morning, she leaves Swastika, her home of the past 50 years, and hops on the Northlander train, eager to put thousands of miles of northern Quebec between her and the improbably named village, and leaving behind her perennially tormented daughter, Lisana.

Our mysterious narrator, who is documenting these disappearing northern trains, is eager to uncover the truth of Gladys's voyage, tracking down fellow passengers and train employees for years to learn what happened to Gladys and her daughter, and why. (From Coach House Books)

Jocelyne Saucier is a novelist from New Brunswick. Three out of her four novels have been finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards. Dancer and presenter Geneviève Guérard championed her fourth novel, Il pleuvait des oiseaux, during the 2013 edition of Le Combat des livres. Two years later, the novel's English translation, And the Birds Rained Down, was defended by folk singer Martha Wainwright on Canada Reads.

Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montreal. She won the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation for Jocelyne Saucier's Twenty-One Cardinals. She has also translated Louis Carmain's Guano, Élise Turcotte's Guyana, Hervé Fischer's The Decline of the Hollywood Empire and Julie Demers's Little Beast.