Rufous and Calliope

Rufous, the Canadian cartographer and former wildlife technician at the center of this immersive story from Butler (The Wild Heavens), is losing his memory due to an unspecified terminal illness. Over the course of the novel, Rufous journeys to the British Columbia Interior, where he grew up, and recovers memories of his childhood there. Abandoned by his mother, he was raised by his grandmother along with his twin sister, Calliope, and their three older half siblings. Their grandmother died in 1979, when the twins were five . Determined not to be split up by social services, the children fled to a campground in the wilderness, where they lived in a tree house and survived by taking odd jobs as apple and blueberry pickers. Eventually, Rufous contracted pneumonia, and his siblings left him with a lesbian couple who took him in. Butler’s depiction of the children’s off-grid life sometimes strains credulity, but there is a surprising plot twist, and Rufous’s mental decline and physical pain are artfully conveyed, as when he’s gripped by a migraine and remembers how his grandmother described them as “grief trapped in your brain, twisting into strange shapes as it tries to break free.” It’s a stimulating tale of a fading man’s journey into the past. (June)