In Winter I Get Up at NightIn Winter I Get Up at Night

In the early morning dark, Emer McConnell rises for a day of teaching music in the schools of rural Saskatchewan. While she travels the snowy roads in the gathering light, she begins another journey, one of recollection and introspection. At the age of 11, she is terribly injured in an enormous prairie storm--the "great wind" that shifts her trajectory forever. As she recovers, separated from her family in a children's ward, Emer gets to know her fellow patients, a memorable group including, among others, a child performer who stars in a travelling circus, the daughter of Dukhobor community, and the son of a leftist Jewish farm collective. The children are tended to by three Nursing Sisters and two doctors. Emer's tale grows outwards from that ward, reaching through time and space in a dreamlike fashion, recounting the stories of her mother's entanglement with a powerful yet mysterious teacher, her brother's dawning spirituality, and the passionate yet distant love affair of Emer and an enigmatic man she calls Harp, after Harpocrates, a Hellenistic God of secrecy and silence--a brilliant scientist whose great discovery has forever altered millions of lives around the world. In Winter I Get Up at Night is a major work of imagination and self-exploration from one of the greatest writers of our time.