Quilaq

Stokeland. It sits at a fork between two roads, one a thick, commercial highway bedeviled by ice for ninety percent of the year; the other a stripped, frozen weave of a road, impassable for ten months out of twelve and huddled beneath wedges of brilliant white snow. It is a wonder that Stokeland has any inhabitants at all; but it does, over a hundred souls.Angie, barmaid, too fond of the drink she serves. Gerry, the ancient trapper who has spent too long sleeping in the snow. Frank, teller of tales. Jack and Connor, bound to each other and to a shared life they cannot fulfill. Hettie and Ernest, driven by hunger.Seeking answers in the cold tundra of the Arctic North, the Stokeland folk are drawn together by the power of one strange, unsettling word - Quilaq. Rebecca Burns is a novelist and short-story writer. Her two short story collections, Catching the Barramundi and The Settling Earth, were longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the UK's only award for short story collections. Rebecca also writes historical fiction - her novels The Bishop's Girl and Beyond the Bay were published in 2016 and 2018. Quilaq from Next Chapter is her latest work.