In A Land So Wide, Erin A. Craig's atmospheric first fantasy novel for adults, a young woman leaves her isolated village to save the man she loves and learns along the way that monsters are far closer than she imagined.
Greer Mackenzie lives in the troubled town of Mistaken in an alternate version of 1700s northern Canada. For almost 100 years, Mistaken has been protected by the Benevolence who gifted them magical warding stones that keep the monsters out and the villagers in. The night before she plans to marry Ellis Beaufort, her beloved, Greer sees him disappear across the village boundaries, something that shouldn't be possible. Fleeing her father's demands and the secrets that have kept her trapped her whole life, Greer follows Ellis. Her journey into the massive forest, which has lured so many would-be settlers to their deaths, brings her closer to the monsters known as Bright-Eyeds--and her own past--than ever before. Will it also bring her to Ellis?
Along with their customs and saws, the settlers brought something else from their European homeland, and Craig (Small Favors) deftly connects her shape-shifting terrors with the legacy of failed settlements in the "new world." A Land So Wide contains the same eerie, cramped atmosphere as Craig's young adult novels, as well as similar themes of self-discovery, liberation, and wanderlust, but the romance and violence are more mature. This novel will satisfy Craig's existing readers while winning her an audience hungry for historical fantasy, bloodthirsty creatures, and a love as dark and vast as an old-growth forest. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian