Sorrowland

"A wonderland of fantastical and frightening, magical and real." Marlon James"A fantastical, fierce reckoning... Sorrowland is gorgeous." Roxanne Gay"Dark, magical and incredibly satisfying." Independent"An exhilarating journey to the outer limits of science fiction." Guardian.---Vern, a hunted woman alone in the woods, gives birth to twins and raises themaway from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong - not withthem, but with her own body. It's changing, it's itching, it's stronger, it's... notnormal.To understand her body's metamorphosis, Vern must investigate not just thesecluded religious compound she fled but the violent history of dehumanization,medical experimentation, and genocide that produced it. In the course ofreclaiming her own darkness, Vern learns that monsters aren't just individuals,but entire histories, systems, and nations.Sorrowland is a memorable work of Gothic fiction that wrestles with the tangledhistory of racism in America and the marginalisation of society's undesirables. Itis a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice inAmerican fiction.

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2021: Rivers Solomon’s writing talent comes on like a firehose in this genre-bending Gothic tale. When Vern flees Cainland, the religious cult where she was raised, she is pregnant and desperate, but she might also finally be on the path to freedom. She gives birth to twins, raising them deep in the forest, until a confrontation with a being she calls “the fiend”—who has been haunting her for years—drives her to leave the forest and seek answers about her past. You will not meet a more memorable protagonist than Vern; this young Black albino intersex mother lights up the novel. So does Rivers Solomon’s writing. Sorrowland is literature, horror, and fantasy—and the ideas and imagery packed into this book could fill half a dozen other novels. At times, it felt like Solomon was only just holding on to the reins of the story, and as a reader I found it thrilling to discover where that could lead. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review

Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times Book Review

“Sorrowland is a tremendous, riveting work, sinking long, deep roots into the nightmare soil of American history in order to grow and feed something new.”

Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian

"Sorrowland [is] a gothic techno-thriller in which the trauma of the past is parried with defiance and a thirst for understanding, as embodied by an electrifying young hero."

Sarah Neilson, Shondaland

“Sorrowland is a fully engrossing story that fully embraces its characters and beautifully engages with their lived experiences of gender, queerness, disability, racialization, power and corruption, and relationship with the land.”

Karla Strand, Ms.

“If you’ve read Rivers Solomon’s previous work, you’ll be familiar with their fearless explorations of transformation, identity, oppression and power, and Sorrowland continues this investigation with fantastic, terrifying sci-fi brilliance.”

Taiwo Balogun, Marie Claire

“Sorrowland is a powerful story about motherhood, survival, and the cruel treatment of Black bodies.”

Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed

“Riveting and harrowing . . . This novel vividly portrays how Black bodies have been used for unethical experiments while it also celebrates queer love, motherhood, and vengeance. It’s gorgeously written and sure to be one of my favorite books of the year.”

Matthew Jackson, BookPage

“A story you simply won’t see coming. You might think you’ve figured out the pillars of its structure after a few chapters, or come to truly understand its protagonist after walking a few dozen pages with her, but to read this powerful, moving and terrifying novel is to enter into a constant state of change. The story envelops you slowly, like a cocoon, wrapping you in its ever-increasing depth and heart until you emerge, at the end, transformed.”

Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

“Science fiction and Gothic horror collide in Solomon’s ambitious third book... Haunting and hopeful, Sorrowland makes expert use of the fantastical to hold a righteous mirror to the very real traumas visited on Black bodies.”

Anna Mickelsen, Booklist

“Solomon once again stretches the boundaries of speculative fiction in this distinct and visceral exploration of the trauma of Black and queer bodies in an all-too believable near future.”

Charlie Jane Anders

“Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon contains so much wisdom and insight, wrapped in an abundance of passion and fury and tenderness. This is the first book I've read in ages that I'm certain I will come back to again and again, because there are rich gorgeous passages that I already know will mean more to me on subsequent readings. There is so much going on in this book, too: the spectre of what happens when rebellion is co-opted, our longstanding practice of using Black bodies for cruel and unethical experiments, the audacity of queer love. The arc of this book takes Vern and her babies away from civilization and then back to it ― but they return changed, and they change everyone else, and this book restored my faith in our potential to transform just when I needed it most.”

Roxane Gay

"Sorrowland, from Rivers Solomon, is a fantastical, fierce reckoning. It is the story of Vern, a young girl fleeing the only life she has ever known, her abusive husband, the cult he leads, to create a life for herself and her babies. But the tentacles of Cainland, the home she left, are always following her as she grows into a young woman and something more, something terrifying and powerful that just might allow her to break free from all that haunts her. Sorrowland is gorgeous and the writing, the storytelling, they are magnificent. This country has a dark history of what it’s willing to do to black bodies and Rivers Solomon lays that truth bare in a most unexpected, absolutely brilliant way."

P. Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout

“Sorrowland delivers! Black Power cults. Government conspiracies. Post-Human transformations. A mother willing to defy everything and everyone―even nature itself―to protect her family. Rivers Solomon has once again created an engrossing, emotional, and original read with pages that demand to be turned. The writing is visceral and soul-clenching. The characters--bold, creative, and memorable. The action, heart-stopping. This is imaginative storytelling at its finest. Once I started, I could not put down Sorrowland until I reached the end. And then I wanted more!”

Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Sorrowland is a wonderland of fantastical and frightening, magical and real, in a world refreshingly unlike ours, yet scarily the same. At the center of this world and leaping off the page is Vern: unstoppable, unforgettable, and unlike anyone you have ever seen before.”

Nicola Griffith

“Sorrowland is a raw, powerful, and visceral read. With Vern, Rivers Solomon has created a woman who simply side-steps her damage, and level after level of difficulty―young, Black, queer, blind, alone in the woods with two newborns and pursued by monstrous government agents―to assume her own power. Nature, joy, science, belonging, human metamorphosis, generational oppression, strength, and sheer lust for life: if Toni Morrison, M. Night Shyamalan, and Marge Piercy got together they might, if they were lucky, produce something with the unstoppable exhilaration of this novel. Sorrowland is sui generis.”

The Fantasy Inn

“Sorrowland is intense and raw. But in the end it was beautiful in a bittersweet way . . . This book should be read. It was truly spectacular.”

About the Author

Rivers Solomonwrites about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, Solomon's debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts was a finalist for a Lambda, a Hurston/Wright, an Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) and a Locus award. Solomon's second book, The Deep, based on the Hugo-nominated song by Daveed Diggs-fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and shortlisted for a Nebula, Locus, Hugo, Ignyte, Brooklyn Library Literary, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award. Solomon's short work appears in Black Warrior Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Best American Horror and Dark Fantasy, and elsewhere. A refugee of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.Karen Chilton is a multi-talented author, actor, and audiobook narrator, as well as a freelance writer, script writer, and librettist. She wrote the biography Hazel Scott about the trailblazing jazz pianist and coauthored I Wish You Love with legendary jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne. Her acting credits include It's Kind of a Funny Story and Half Nelson. She won a New Professional Theatre Writers award for her play Convergence and an Audiofile Golden Earphones Award for her narration of Karolyn Smardz Frost's I've Got a Home in Glory Land. She has also narrated Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Jennifer Berry Hawes' Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness.

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