The Gyre
A novel forthcoming from Alternating Current Press.
The Gyre chronicles the travails of Arkady Afanasev, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox monk who wants to be the northernmost holy man in the world.
The story hinges on matters of survival and the tremendous gumption required of the people who venture to the arctic.
It is a novel of spiritual aspiration, doomed ambition and the unexpectedly rich layers of folklore present in Spitsbergen, a remote arctic archipelago often thought of as a Terra nullius.