A Line You Have Traced

Cloud Atlas meets This Is How You Lose the Time War in this gorgeous speculative novel that explores how a mysterious red journal connects three women born centuries apart in East London.

In the Jewish East End of post-World War I London, Bea, a young shopkeeper's wife, is visited by an uncanny figure she believes is an angel. She tries to understand the meaning of these visits as the life she is building with her new husband is threatened by fascists who are increasingly targeting her friends and neighbors.

Kay spends nights partying with her friends in contemporary East London's underground queer scene, where one of them is gaining fame as a drag queen. She entertains herself by imagining that people she passes on the street are time travelers who have come back in time specifically to visit her. As she becomes infatuated with the brilliant O, she discovers an aged red notebook that seems to be the journal of an ancestor who was also visited by a mystical being.

One hundred years in the future, against a backdrop of climate emergency and violent oppression, Ess lives off the grid as part of a collective that's planning for the end of human life on Earth. After uncovering an ancient worn red book in an archive, she is invited to a nearby commune to help with a critical journey into the past to possibly help save the present.

Epic in scope, with unforgettable characters and a rare clarity of vision, A Line You Have Traced asks profound questions about how we might survive and engage with the world, and with each other before it’s too late.