Thomas Wharton is a bestselling Edmonton author and professor. His latest book is The Book of Rain, a suspenseful sci-fi novel about nature, environmental stewardship and the fate of the planet.

The Book of Rain is a multi-plotted novel set in a world where ghost ore, a new minable energy source much more lucrative than gold, can disrupt time and space and slowly make an environment inhospitable. In one of three ghost ore hotspots in the world, the Alberta mining town of River Meadows, residents have been evacuated, except Amery Hewitt can't seem to stay away.

The former resident frequently returns to River Meadows to save the animals still living in the contaminated zone. When Amery goes on another dangerous trip and doesn't return, her game designer brother, Alex, enlists the help of his mathematician friend Michio to help get her back — and all they need to do is break the laws of physics.

Wharton is a Canadian writer and professor in the English department at University of Alberta. Wharton has written several books, including his first novel, Icefields, which won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. Icefields was a finalist for Canada Reads 2008, when it was defended by Steve MacLean.

His novel Salamander was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and was also a finalist for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize the same year.

With The Book of Rain, readers familiar with Wharton's earlier books should probably expect the unexpected, he told CBC Books via email.

"The novel explores the devastating effects of a strange ore on the inhabitants of a northern Alberta mining town: not only the people but other animals as well. I wanted to foreground something that most novels ignore in their traditional focus on human society, and that is the absolutely vital interconnectedness of life on Earth," Wharton said.

"I hope I've written an exciting story that will keep readers reading, but also make them see our damaged, wondrous planet with fresh eyes."

The Book of Rain is on the shortlist for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The annual $60,000 award recognizes the best novel or short story collection by a Canadian author. The winner will be announced at the Writers' Trust awards gala on Nov. 21, 2023.

You can watch the trailer for The Book of Rain now.

Read an excerpt from the novel below.

After a few minutes Alex can see the wire of the fence that borders the Park shining faintly in the dim light. When they reach it, Michio crouches and creeps along the fence line, then stops.

"This is the place," he says.

Alex can't see any break or gap. Michio walks forward, and an instant later he's on the other side, looking at Alex through the wire mesh.

"Just walk straight toward me," he says.

Alex does. The mesh goes hazy for a moment, as if he's too close for his eyes to focus on it. Then he's through.

"How could you tell that was the spot?" he asks.

"You learn, if you come here often enough. And survive."

The ground beneath them is soft and mossy. Alex can smell the early damp rising from the earth. It brings to mind camping trips when he was a kid, waking up outdoors and away from home, the freedom and at the same time the uneasiness. He wasn't sure what he was expecting on this side of the fence. Something more obvious, perhaps — a scent or a feeling that screamed stay away.

Michio reaches out a hand and flicks something off Alex's neck.

"Biter," he says.

"Thanks. I did bring bug repellent. Are they bad here?"

"Not inside the fence."

"Well, that's one good thing."

"Is it?"

Alex isn't sure what that means. He realizes he's not eager to move forward.

"Stay a couple of paces behind me," Michio says. "Don't lag behind. If I raise my hand, stop and wait for me to say it's okay to move again. If you see me drop my hand, that means crouch down. We can talk, for now, but keep your voice down."

Alex takes his phone from his jacket pocket. He'd called his mother first thing in the morning, to tell her he was getting help looking for Amery and that he had some promising leads to try. He said nothing about going into the Park himself. He debates sending her an update now, to reassure her that something is being done.

"You won't get much from that here," Michio says.

Alex puts the phone away.

"In this place you don't check your devices," Michio says. "You check your senses. All of them, over and over. Sight. Sound. Smell. Balance. How things feel, on your skin and in your gut.

Keep checking in with all of that. Cycle through it every few minutes. Sight, sound, smell... It's easy to get distracted and not notice that something has changed. There might only be a tiny shift, but it could mean your life."

Alex nods, too dismayed to speak. For an instant he wants to bolt for the fence. Could he even get back through on his own?

Michio is already moving on.

He has to follow. He has to see this through.

"Have you ever watched a grouse step through the underbrush?" Michio asks in a gentler tone.

"No."

"Or the way a moose or a lynx will stop and watch and wait until it feels safe to move again. That's how we need to move in here. Like the animals. Like every step we take means life or death."

They wade through a patch of chest-high thistles and move slowly into the trees. On their right the ground falls away into a long, low trench, natural or artificial he can't tell, filled with shocks of thick grass and stunted willows. A tangle of green where something could easily be hiding, waiting to spring out at them. He forces his thoughts back to what he was told to concentrate on: focusing a few seconds at a time on what's coming to him through his eyes, ears, nostrils, skin…There's no difference between the world on the other side of the fence and here, as far as anything his senses are telling him.

It's the same damp, resinous darkness. In his head he keeps seeing Amery as the little girl she was, before River Meadows. Full of beans. Happy, laughing. He imagines she's going to jump out from behind a tree at any moment and shout Ha!

Gotcha!

But it's no good. He can't shake this dread roiling through him. And now it's found its point of attack.

Excerpted from The Book of Rain by Thomas Wharton. Copyright © 2023 Thomas Wharton. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.