Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum – författare

An American literary take on the Nordic noir genre Unfolding during the moody Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, we follow Bernadette Baston, scholar of child development and language acquisition, as she travels to a penitentiary on the remote island Elita in the Puget Sound to consult on a curious case: two guards have discovered an animal-like adolescent girl living alone in the cold woods beyond the prison’s walls. There are few answers, but many people who know more than they are saying. According to official reports, the girl, dubbed Atalanta, does not speak. Is her silence protecting someone? The prison warden, court-appointed guardian, and police detective embroil Bernadette in resolving a secret that tight-knit the island community has long held, and her investment in the girl’s case soon becomes more personal than professional. As a mother, wife, and woman bound by mid-twentieth-century expectations, Bernadette strategizes to retain the fragile control she has over her own freedom, identity, and future, which becomes inextricably tied to solving Atalanta’s case.

The stories in Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum’s new collection are about finding resilience in the face of adversity. Following losses big and small, environmental and familial, universal and personal, the best of us try to recover and rebuild. Lunstrum asks: How do we keep going in the face of grief or disappointment when love fails or disaster strikes? How do we maintain the stamina to carry on in an uncertain world? The characters in her stories are living these questions and learning to reconstruct themselves, their families, and their futures from the wreckage of their broken pasts.