LONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE

The slow-burning, deeply felt story of a social outcast reckoning with the wounds of her past

Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez—a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak—upending Regina's quiet life.

It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through plains and mountains that forces Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.

Rife with gothic tension and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.