In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racismโand strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the cityโs orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she canโt imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future,ย The Futureย is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we loveโtogether.
Praise forย The Future
โWhat makesย The Futureย hopeful is its imagining of new, organic, co-operative (but not egalitarian) communities โฆ savage but caring networks: small, local, and while living close to the edge still managing to get by. It may not be progress, but it is adapting to a vision of the future that hits pretty close to home.โ
โAlex Good,ย Toronto Star
โThis atmospheric novel elevates disparate voices, drawing a complex picture of community-focused life beyond the family unit.โ
โKirkus Reviewsย (starred review)
โThe Futureย is a rewarding read, mostly because of the hope it instills. There is some violence, of course, but Lerouxโs vision of the future is one where people go out of their way to help each other to survive.โ
โWinnipeg Free Press
โLeroux brings believability, poetry, and hopefulness to the dystopian narrative of Fort Dรฉtroit by steering clear of the many pitfalls of end-times novel โฆ This permits the novel to imagine infinite small beginnings within the ending, and to show how destruction is balanced by the ever-present promise of creation.โ
โBronwyn Averett,ย Montreal Review of Books
โAt the heart of Catherine Lerouxโs extraordinary novel are the rising and vanishing lifeworlds nurtured by the Rouge River. The children of the Rouge are hunters and prey, remorseless, capable, indelibleโโwildingsโ who are simultaneously custodians and seeds of the future. This ferocious, provocative dystopia is a dance of knives, and a deeply moving exploration of our decaying, adapting, ever-changing world.โ
โMadeleine Thien, author ofย Do Not Say We Have Nothing
โUnlike some dystopian books,ย The Futureย is suffused with a sense of optimism โฆ Though their neighbourhood is decaying and the economy is crumbling, the characters reach beyond the every-person-for-themselves trope by celebrating community, the power of cooperation, and hope.โ
โThe Miramichi Reader
โAn inherently fascinating, original, and carefully crafted novel that raises โalternate historyโ science fiction to a high level of literary eloquence,ย The Futureย is unique, entertaining, and highly recommended.โ
โMidwest Review of Books
โThis is a wonderful and complicated story about unique and intertwined characters. Leroux includes perfectly subtle allusions, and her writing is absolutely beautiful.โ
โMcGill Daily
โAt the height of her art, in a profound and teeming language marked by dialogues written in an invented patois, Catherine Leroux also gives us a glimpse of a world where nature flourishes against all odds, where legends are brought to life and where magical realism reigns.โ
โLa Presse, Montreal
โThe novel answers concrete questions: what happens after the end of the world? โฆ Nothing can erase the survivorsโ traumatic memories but their hope persists and their present is full of intergenerational support and characters who create new ways of living among the ruins โฆ Catherine Leroux delivers a dazzling and original novel, above all a testament to the humanity and resilience of communities in the margins.โ
โEtudes, Montreal
โThis poignant utopia captures how cities have souls, how they live and die, and how they sometimes miraculously rise from the dead. Far from the usual depressing post-apocalyptic novel,ย The Futureย is an exhilarating story in which Gloria, who relies on her daily horoscope to guide her, creates a future for her community that is finally able to find wonder after suffering loss.โ
โLivres Hebdo, Montreal
โDespite the suffering and horror, despite the precariousness, the novel is full of hope, light and goodness, and offers a vision of intergenerational healing.โ
โLe Devoir, Montreal