The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel Format: Paperback

From a hardscrabble village in Nova Scotia to the collapsing trenches of France, a debut novel about a family divided by World War I.

In the tradition of Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife and Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn, P. S. Duffy’s astonishing debut showcases a rare and instinctive talent emerging in midlife. Her novel leaps across the Atlantic, between a father at war and a son coming of age at home without him.

When his beloved brother-in-law goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and find him. Assured a position as a cartographer in London, he is instead sent directly into the visceral shock of battle. Meanwhile, at home, his son Simon Peter must navigate escalating hostility in a fishing village torn by grief. With the intimacy of The Song of Achilles and the epic scope of The Invisible Bridge, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land offers a soulful portrayal of World War I and the lives that were forever changed by it, both on the battlefield and at home.

P.S. Duffy lives in Rochester, MN. She was born in mainland China to American parents who were part of the Anglican mission there and returned to Massachusetts in 1950. She spent 35 summers sailing in Nova Scotia, where her family roots go back to 1754. She has a degree in history from Concordia University in Montreal and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota  in neurologically based communication disorders, and had a 25 year career in that field. She now balances writing in the neurosciences for Mayo Clinic with creative writing and is the author of flash fiction, creative non-fiction and a graduate textbook on right brain damage. The Cartographer of No Man's Land (W.W. Norton), is her first novel.  psduffy.com
 
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