riverrun buys murder-suicide novel set in the Hebrides

Quercus imprint riverrun has acquired Rebecca Wait’s new novel about the impact of a murder-suicide on a small island in the Hebrides.

Our Fathers tells the story of 31-year-old Tom Baird, the only survivor of his father’s crime, who returns to his isolated island home after years away to reckon with his past.

Editor Niamh Mulvey, who acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Caroline Hardman of Hardman & Swainson, said: “I could not stop reading this manuscript when it came in – I was completely compelled by Becky’s ability to combine gentle and tender insights into her characters with an unflinching look at how violence and control can warp and destroy a family. It looks at the horror of family annihilation from the point of view of those obscured by the media narrative – the mother and children – and asks subtle but pointed questions about how communities deal with these events.”

Riverrun will publish the novel in 2020.

Rights have also sold to Europa in the US, EO in Italy, and Kein & Aber in Germany.

Wait is also the author of The View on the Way Down (Picador) and The Followers (Europa Editions).