*Soon to be a TV series*
Jimmy Fallon´s Book Club Top Four Pick and a PBS Book Club Pick
For fans of Kazuo Ishiguro and Emily St. John Mandel, this "mind-bending take on time travel" (The New York Times) is about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.
Sixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she´ll decide who may cross her town´s heavily guarded borders. To the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it´s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn´t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he´s still alive in Odile´s present.
Edme--who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly know Odile--is going to die. Sworn to secrecy to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil´s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, jeopardizing her entire future.