Longlisted, Giller Prize

“I said, ‘the pair of us look like some scratch ‘n win tickets,’ and Earn said, ‘More like scratch ‘n lose.’”

Knickle is a young Islander with no friends, direction, or purpose in his life. When he drives to northern New Brunswick to pick up an acquaintance’s brother from a mental health hospital, the pair make a sudden decision to travel further west to try to find a life amidst the chaos of Upper Canada. In the big city of Tah-ron-ah for the first time, Knickle discovers love, hope, and profound loss.

A hilarious, sensitive, and heady working-class odyssey rife with metaphorical richness and references to literature, film, and 90s music, Your Breath in Charcoal peers into the mind of its irrepressible and relentlessly quotable East Coast everyman. A follow-up to Some Hellish, Herring’s breathtaking Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-winning debut novel, Your Breath in Charcoal marks yet another galvanizing entry into the East Coast literary canon.