Sanctuary Line - Hardcover

PRAISE FOR "SANCTUARY LINE"

"Urquhart handles the layers of narrative with lyrical aplomb." --"Financial Times"

"The most compelling depiction of the sense of place in human lives." --Alice Munro

"Urquhart's writing is poetic, in the sense that it is beautifully compact and restrained when describing the most powerful emotions." --"The Times"

"Urquhart's style is reminiscent of that of the Pulitzer-winner Marilynne Robinson." --"Irish Times

""In a past tense rich with nostalgia, and a voice filled with regret, Urquhart builds up a picture of a vanished idyll, a thriving fruit farm populated by an extended family sure of its place in the world . . . Urquhart's prose brims with . . . emotional sensitivity." --Susanna Rustin, "Guardian"

"The importance of place is a strong current in the work of Canadian writer Jane Urquhart. In "Sanctuary Line" . . . she has crafted an austerely graceful, richly symbolic novel." --Claire Allfree, "Metro"

"Powered by the dense symbolism, intense emotion and preoccupation with nature that marks the romantics . . . "Sanctuary Line" is a book lover's novel." --Donna Bailey Nurse, "Globe and Mail"

"Complex and thought-provoking . . . Urquhart builds stories like an architect . . . and the brilliance of [her] powerful ending is that it makes us want to start again." --Emily Donaldson, "Toronto Star"

PRAISE FOR "SANCTUARY LINE"
""Sanctuary Line "is delicately balanced, powerful and purposeful, and is Urquhart at her best, a storyteller and stylist of the first rank." --Gary Curtis, "Hamilton Spectator"
"The payoff in "Sanctuary Line" is . . . spectacular--a multiple detonation that reverberates back to many earlier events and phrases." --David Grylls, "Sunday Times"
"Urquhart's writing is poetic, in the sense that it is beautifully compact and restrained when describing the most powerful emotions." --Kate Saunders, "The Times"
"Captures very deftly the sense of a disappearing world, created with such personal sacrifice by the first settlers . . . Urquhart handles the layers of narrative with lyrical aplomb." --Susan Elderkin, "The Financial Times"
"Urquhart's style is reminiscent of that of the Pulitzer-winner Marilynne Robinson . . .The real delight in Urquhart's story is the language she uses to weave it. She's a poet, even when she's writing novels." --Mary Morrissy, "Irish Times"
"Haunting . . . and the ending, when it comes, is well worth the wait, revealing the answers to mysteries we didn't even know existed." --Donna Bailey Nurse, "The Globe and Mail"
"Urquhart builds up a picture of a vanished idyll . . . Urquhart's prose brims with . . . emotional sensitivity." --Susanna Rustin, "The Guardian"
"Powerful . . . Urquhart knows love and longing, knows life and its many permutations. She has given us a multifaceted novel bursting with all of that." --James MacGowan, "The Ottawa Citizen"
"Urquhart builds stories like an architect . . . the brilliance of [the] powerful ending is that it makes us want to start again from the beginning." --Emily Donaldson, "Toronto Star
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"Measured, dignified, calm on the surface but containing as much thematic richness and plain literary pleasure as a reader could care to dig for."--"Montreal Gazette"
"I'm grateful to have spent time

"A lovely reverie from its first sentence." ""More" magazine""

""Sanctuary Line" is delicately balanced, powerful and purposeful, and is Urquhart at her best, a storyteller and stylist of the first rank." "Gary Curtis, "Hamilton Spectator"""

Praise for Jane Urquhart:

"The most compelling depiction of the sense of place in human lives." "Alice Munro""

Praise for "Sanctuary Line"

"Captures very deftly the sense of a disappearing world, created with such personal sacrifice by the first settlers... Urquhart handles the layers of narrative with lyrical aplomb." "Susan Elderkin, "The Financial Times"""

"[A] finely tuned read." ""Kirkus Reviews"""

"The payoff in "Sanctuary Line" is... spectacular--a multiple detonation that reverberates back to many earlier events and phrases." "David Grylls, "Sunday Times"""

"I'm grateful to have spent time with "Sanctuary Line" and soaked up Urquhart's nuanced wisdom." ""Vancouver Sun"""

Praise for Jane Urquhart:
"The most compelling depiction of the sense of place in human lives." "Alice Munro""

Alice Munro hails Urquhart's "most compelling depiction of the sense of place in human lives." "Urquhart's writing is poetic, in the sense that it is beautifully compact and restrained when describing the most powerful emotions," says The Times. The author Claire Messud praises her as having "a great gift for the historical novel, for the melding of ideas, events and individuals into a significant whole."

In Sanctuary Line Urquhart has created a nuanced and moving novel about family legacies, love, and betrayal. Solitary, nostalgic Liz Crane returns to her family's now-deserted farmhouse--once the setting for countless happy summers spent on the northern shore of Lake Erie--to study the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. Encompassing all the colorful stories and blarney of successful Irish immigrants who have made the most of their relocation to North America, the Cranes' rich family history is now circumscribed by sadness. Liz's beloved cousin Amanda, a gifted military strategist, has been killed in Afghanistan, a loss that had been foreshadowed many years in the past by the disappearance of Amanda's charismatic father.

Reflecting on the fragility and transience of human life and relations--mirrored in the butterflies' restless flight patterns and transcontinental migrations--Liz finds that love is there to be found where, and when, you least expect it.