The Seventh Mansion

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More by Maryse Meijer : The Seventh Mansion

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“With astute empathy and tenderness, The Seventh Mansion brilliantly examines what it means to be human in a diminishing earthly world.” —Crissy Van Meter, author of Creatures

Nominated for the 2020 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel

One of The Millions’s Most Anticipated Books of the Second-Half of 2020

One of Library Journal’s 35 Standout Summer/Fall 2020 Debut Novels

One of Shondaland’s 11 New Books That Will Change How You Think About the Climate Crisis

After moving from California to a rural Southern town to live with his father, fifteen-year-old Xie joins two new friends in freeing a captive mink from a local farm. When Xie is the only one caught and gets kicked out of high school, he becomes increasingly connected with nature, serving as a custodian for what others ignore, abuse, and discard.

Exploring the woods alone one night, Xie discovers the relic of a Catholic saint—the martyred Pancratius—in a nearby church and develops a complex and passionate relationship with the bones and spirit of the saint, whom he calls P. As Xie’s relationship deepens with P., so too does his relationship with the woods—private property that will soon be overrun with loggers. As Xie enacts a plan to save his beloved woods, he must also find a way to balance his conflicting—and increasingly extreme—ideals of purity, sacrifice, and responsibility in order to live in this world.

The Seventh Mansion is a deeply moving and profoundly original debut novel—both an urgent literary call to arms and an unforgettable coming-of-age story about finding love and selfhood in the face of mass extinction and environmental destruction.

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