Guernica Editions

Ten years after her picture on a magazine cover made her nationally famous as The Darling of Kandahar, Irina moves up North hoping that new experiences would allow old wounds to finally heal. Yet, in the land of darkness and polar bears, she learns that there really is no place to hide from herself. When she meets Constable Liam O'Connor, her past comes out to challenge her once again.

My arrival up north started under bad auspices. Contrary to what I had hoped, there was nobody from the French school board waiting for me at the airport. My six huge pieces of luggage were the last ones to come out on the baggage carousel and they looked as lonely as me. When the last passenger left, I decided to take a cab to the address emailed by the Nunavut Housing Corporation, my faceless and anonymous landlord. On the way, I realized I didn't have the key to the apartment, on this fine Labour Day when the whole city seemed like an abandoned ship, beset in the ice. In that same moment I had a vision of a Kafkaesque housing castle where tenants were nothing but folders. My arrival, that of a Montreal French teacher called Irina, had just slipped to the bottom of the stack.