Turnback Ridge — Gerri Brightwell

A literary thriller set in a near-future Alaska in which global warming and immigration policy are wreaking havoc on lives and land.



In the wake of his wife's mysterious disappearance, Nash Preston is trying to hold his family together. As the Alaska summer heats up, he ignores his expired visa -- and now immigration bounty hunters are after him as he flees for the border with his sons. Their already fraught journey takes an alarming turn when his youngest, Robbie, picks up a mysterious fossil that makes him sick. When his boys are snatched and taken to a sinister detention facility, he must find a way to save them.

Turnback Ridge engages with current and complex issues such as changes to immigration policy and attitudes, climate crisis, and the danger of the potential monetization of climate solutions. Fast-paced and thought-provoking, it expands upon the growing trend of literary fiction that embraces the tropes of genre fiction to examine climate change -- such as Alex DiFrancesco's All City or Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow.