In Case I Go | CBC Books - Action News
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In Case I Go

The living and the dead mingle in Angie Abdou's young adult novel set in a mountain town.

Angie Abdou

In Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou's fifth work of fiction, Eli and his parents have returned to their family home in Coalton, a small mountain town. The parents, Nicholas and Lucy, hope that by escaping their hectic city lives, they will restore calm and stability to their marriage, but they find that once charming Coalton is no longer the remote idyll they remembered. Development of a high-end subdivision has disturbed a historic graveyard, drawing negative press from national media. While Nicholas works long hours at the local coal mine and Lucy battles loneliness and depression, Eli befriends Mary, a troubled Ktunaxa girl who lives next door. Both children, disturbed by visions of people and places long forgotten, are challenged to account for past lives of seduction and betrayal.

A new kind of ghost story, In Case I Go is about the many ways we're haunted by the misdeeds of our ancestors. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)

From the book


The first time I saw Mary, I already knew her. She came with a song, and I knew it too.
Eye ya ah nuss hewk zoo kah nee.
The sound rose up out of her, each stretch of vowels sounding like a moan from the wounded. Eye ya ah nuss hewk zoo kah nee. Her melody stirred a memory in me, one that danced barely out of my reachm as real as the smell of bread before its taste of salt and warm butter touches my tongue.
I wanted this girl to be a kid, like I was. Her body looked thin and childlike, but both her song and her eyes made her seem older. Her yellow dress cinched tight at her waist. The sleeves hugged her arms from shoulder to wrist. The old-fashioned dress looked uncomfortable and constraining, but she moved freely. When she twirled, the skirt swung around her ankles.


From In Case I Goby Angie Abdou2017. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press.