HarperNorth pre-empts Barker-White's thriller

HarperNorth has pre-empted Eleanor Barker-White’s debut novel, My Name Was Eden. 

Commissioning editor, Daisy Watt, acquired world all-languages rights to My Name Was Eden and a second novel direct from the author. William Morrow’s executive editor, Liz Stein, will co-publish in the US and Canada. My Name Was Eden will publish as a lead title in hardback, e-book and audio in early 2024.

The book is inspired by the author’s own experience of vanishing twin syndrome (VTS) (a lesser-known medical phenomenon which occurs in one in five multiple pregnancies, where one baby "vanishes" in the womb) and follows Lucy, a mother who never fully came to terms with the loss of her vanished child. Fourteen years later, the family is pushed to breaking point when Lucy’s surviving daughter, Eden, has a mysterious near-death experience… and wakes up in hospital calling herself by her vanished twin’s name.

Watt said: “My Name Was Eden is an outstandingly psychologically acute family drama which keeps the reader hooked on its impossible premise and guessing at every turn.”

Barker-White added: "I hadn’t heard of VTS before it happened to me. The doctor explained, almost in jovial tones, that the second baby had quite literally vanished and become reabsorbed, and that it was fairly common with twin pregnancies. I started to think about what might happen if the twin vanished for a reason. And what if it later reappeared, or was believed to have reappeared.”