The Sunlight Pilgrims

The Sunlight Pilgrims, the second novel by Jenni Fagan (The Panopticon), opens in November 2020, as temperatures around the world are plummeting to record lows. It is below freezing in England long before winter has officially begun. Dylan's mother has just died, and the family business is being reclaimed by the bank. Left with nothing but his grief, the family gin recipe and the title to a small trailer in Scotland, Dylan boards a bus north to settle into his newly inherited home and try to make sense of his life. There, amidst news reports threatening the coldest winter on record, Dylan meets Stella, the 12-year-old girl next door, and Constance, her mother.

The three form a trio of town misfits: Dylan is an "incomer"; transgender Stella struggles to be seen as the girl she knows she is; and Constance is known to have had two concurrent lovers for over two decades. But what the townspeople see as imperfections are ultimately what make each character, individually and then again as a unit, the perfect center for Fagan's story. Their warmth and humanity stand out in stark contrast to the barren, cold landscape of the Scottish Highlands and the impending winter. Because ultimately, The Sunlight Pilgrims is not about catastrophe or disaster or climate change (though it is, in some ways, about all of them). It is about what happens in between and around and in spite of those big things: the everyday moments of life and its machinations, the work we do to find our place in a chaotic world, and what it means to love and be loved. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Powered by: Xtenit