Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne is an awkward, quiet girl, vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decree who among the town's residents may be escorted deep into the woods, who may cross the border's barbed wire fence, who may make the arduous trek to descend into the next valley over. It's the same valley, the same town. But to the east, the town is 20 years ahead in time. To the west, it's twenty years behind. The only border crossings permitted by the Conseil are mourning tours: furtive viewings of the dead in towns where the dead are still alive.

When Odile recognizes two mourners she wasn't supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her classmate Edme have crossed the border from the future to see their son while he's still alive in Odile's present. Edme — who is brilliant and funny, and the only person to truly know Odile — is about to die. Sworn to secrecy by the Conseil so as not to disrupt the course of nature, Odile finds herself drawing closer to her doomed friend — imperiling her own future.

Masterful and original, The Other Valley is an affecting modern fable about the inevitable march of time and whether or not fate can be defied. Above all, it is about love and letting go, and the bonds, in both life and death, that never break. (From Simon & Schuster)

The Other Valley is on the longlist for Canada Reads 2025. The final five books and the panellists who chose them will be revealed on Jan. 23, 2025.

The Other Valley is Scott Alexander Howard's first novel. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. He currently lives in Vancouver.

"The idea of rendering time travel as just as simple as geographical travel is the original conceit of the book. What if there was no time machine? What if there was no wormhole or portal or anything like that? What if it was as simple as walking to the past or future?

"That image, I'm not really sure where it came from, but I know when it came. I was living in Toronto and a friend of mine was about to pass away. She was in hospice, and this was about ten years ago. I had this idea long before I did anything with it.

"And so we were in that awful period of just waiting. And the idea of getting to visit her again was floated. But then it turned out that things were moving too quickly and most of her friends didn't get to see her again after she went into hospice. It was during those days when I suddenly had this image come to me of just the same town, across the landscape, repeating over and over and over again.

"I think the personal context of where that idea came from sort of explains why I always knew that the primary use of time travel in this world was going to be for grieving or for mourning, as opposed to any kind of more action-oriented tropes.

"I always thought it was going to be about emotions and I think that's probably due to where I was at when that idea came."

Read the full interview here.