After Alice

After
retiring from the heady world of academia, Sidonie von Täler has returned to
the small Okanagan Valley town she escaped in her youth for the lights of the
big city. The family orchard has since gone to seed, and ever decades later
Sidonie still finds herself living in the shadow of her deceased older sister
Alice.

As she gets down to work sifting through the detritus
of her family’s legacy, Sidonie is haunted by memories of trauma and triumph in
equal measure, and must reconcile past and present while reconnecting with the
family members she has left.

Karen Hofmann’s debut novel
blends a poetic sensibility with issues of land stewardship, social
stratification and colonialism, painting the geological and historical
landscape of the Okanagan in vivid and varied colours.