Order these titles now. Available internationally, at Waterstones, Amazon, B&N, BookShop.org, Powell's, Abe's Books and other online sellers. Also available through order from your local independent bookstores.
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Sowilo PressSowilo Press is named for Sowilo, an Old Norse rune associated with the sun, and standing for the force of fire and passion in the physical and mental world. This imprint is dedicated to promoting writing by and about women, both fiction and nonfiction. It is the imprint which will publish our Eludia Award winning titles. For more information about The Eludia Award, please see our blog. NOTE: Our books are available internationally, and we encourage purchase from independent booksellers. Our authors are available for interviews, appearances, book clubs and other events. Please contact us to discuss.
Inscription by Christine Whittemore, winner of our Eludia Award, tells the intertwining stories of two women, living two thousand
years apart. Aubrey writes at the end of the twentieth century, interpreting a
hitherto unknown ancient manuscript. Marina is the scribe who writes that
manuscript at the end of the first century AD, from her exile on an Italian island. As Aubrey transcribes Marina's struggle to survive in the ancient Roman world, her own buried story emerges. Her commentary on the manuscript becomes an encounter with a loss she has tried to forget. The two women touch across the centuries; Marina's two-thousand-year-old words change Aubrey's life. sellers online and by order. Available in the U.S. and internationally at Waterstones, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookShop and at other sellers online and through order.
Sleepers Awake by Tree Riesener, inaugural winner of our Eludia Award, is a collection of short stories that explore the varying experiences of spirituality, religion and belief in an increasingly cynical and secular world. Comic, engaging and disquieting, Tree's stories have been compared with Flannery O'Connor, Mark Twain. With her deep and abiding love of her quirky characters and a poet's eye for the beauty of language, Tree provides us with stories that abide and resonate. Jacob Appel says, "Sleepers Awake is a necessary collection for our times, and a darn pleasurable read." Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookShop, and other sellers, both online and by order.
The Accidental Wife by Orla McAlinden, winner of the Third Eludia Award, as well as winner of the prestigious Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award, Short Story of 2016 prize for "The Visit", included in The Accidental Wife. Set against the tense background of Northern Ireland's Troubles, The Accidental Wife follows the twists and turns of the McCann family over seven decades. How many generations will these secrets destroy? Marion Smith has a secret. So does Colette McCann. Why did Matthew Jordan slip his passport into his pocket before he kissed his wife goodbye and drove to work? In a land riddled with suspicion and fear, secrets are not easy to keep. How long can Marion Smith hide what happened in Derry at the height of the Second World War? How many generations will her secret destroy? Lies, half-truths and omissions litter the stories of the McCann family, spanning seventy years of Northern Ireland's turbulent history. Who will come through unscathed and who will pay for the sins of the fathers? Available at BookShop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other sellers, both online and by order.
Ruby Hands by Cheryl Romo, winner of our Fourth Eludia Award. A mystery set on reservation territory, the novel tells the story of Daisy Sandoval, a young mother who teaches school on the reservation in Arizona, who is found near death in a ravine. Tribal members suspect foul play and focus on Harlan Sandoval, Daisy’s ex-husband, a defrocked Pentecostal preacher who now heads a family-run criminal gang on the reservation. Upon her death, Kate Thorsen, Daisy's aunt, works with a Mojave Shaman to solve her murder. The novel explores the deep differences in the cultural and spiritual beliefs of the natives on the reservation and the outsiders who try to impose their own rules and values on them. Available at BookShop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other sellers, both online and by order.
In Progress by Catharine Leggett, winner of our Fifth Eludia Award. A collection of short stories set in a changing and rapidly modernizing rural Canadian landscape, these tales explore the lives, the dreams, the struggles and the strength of the families facing a transforming society and a sometimes baffling unfolding of modernity. Told largely through the lives of the women and girls trying to find their place in this new world, Leggett examines the often unseen and unspoken humanity standing defiant in the face of a world heedlessly altering what is real and what is not. Available at BookShop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other sellers, both online and by order. The Emigrant and Other Stories by Justine Dymond, winner of our Sixth Eludia Award. The stories in this collection range widely in setting and era, including France during World War II, Maine in the early eighteenth century, and Tennessee in the twenty-first century. What the stories all have in common, however, are characters who experience life as foreigners, whether in their own countries or not, and who long for a real or imaginary "elsewhere". Each character has a different impulse that propels their longing. Each story represents a border experience, imposed from the outside or inside, that paradoxically confines and propagates the human desire to be somewhere else. Available at all online booksellers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as through order at all brick and mortar stores. Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison, Eludia Award winner. Crazy Mountain chronicles a rapidly changing place and community through the diverse and conflicting stories of the people who live in a fictional mountain valley in Montana over nearly half a century (1970-2015). As newly built roads carve through the primal wild, and the rural landscape transforms into subdivisions, McMansions and resorts, conflicts escalate between locals and newcomers, developers and environmentalists, the wealthy and the homeless. Through multiple perspectives we hear the voices of ranchers, real estate agents, carpenters, artists, New Agers, Native American activists, landscapers, movie stars, musicians, pizza delivery drivers, gun-toting fundamentalists, and others including Kate, a troubled young woman who becomes homeless over the course of the book and whose own story in many ways mirrors the destruction and resurrection of the land. These varied threads weave together into a rich tapestry of place, exploring timely themes of housing booms and homelessness, loss of open land to development, cultural clashes, and the correlation between how we treat the natural world and how we treat each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. What does it mean to lose a place we love, and what does it mean to gain from it? Perhaps it depends on perspective. Crazy Mountain is available at all online booksellers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as through order at all brick and mortar stores. Helen Button by Carol Roh Spaulding. Winner of the Eludia Award. Daughter of a Collaborationist. Housekeeper to Gertrude Stein. An ordinary woman lives through extraordinary times. In this dual timeline narrative, a young French housekeeper lives out the years of World War II near Vichy France with her famous employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. Decades later, she returns to France from the United States, finding that a fateful decision she made as a young woman echoes in the present in unexpected ways. In the years leading to Nazi occupation, young siblings Hélène and Guillaume Bouton, reluctant newcomers to the village of Bilignin, France happen upon new friends-their eccentric neighbors Gertrude Stein, and her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas. Dubbed "Helen Button" by Stein because she is half-American, Hélène-the stepdaughter of a French Vichy officer-grows up in a tense climate of advancing war. In 1939, war begins. Hélène, now eighteen years old, returns to France from a visit to the United States. To escape her fretful alcoholic mother and oppressive household, she takes a position as a bonne femme (housekeeper) for Stein and Toklas. When a careless remark by Stein seems to doom a young Jewish boy, Isaiah, brought into safety by the Resistance, Hélène's friendship with the couple becomes strained. Increasingly distressed by Gertrude's unusual political affiliations, Hélène and her lover, Resistance fighter Milo Fourche, begin to spy on the writer through her work. One night near the war's end, Milo learns the Gestapo plan a brutal attack on a nearby safe house for Jewish children. Hélène has the chance to intercept, which could save Isaiah's life, as well. Instead, the consequences of that fateful night will take Hélène a lifetime to face down. Helen Button available at all online booksellers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as through order at all brick and mortar stores. COMING IN 2025: Kathleen Furin, Eludia Award, for Last Sunrise. |
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