The novel opens with a chilling glimpse of the Kurapaty forest, where thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of the victims ofStalin’s security police have lain since the late 1930s, “a place of shadows, lost in an uneasy sleep.” From there, we’re transported to a baking-hot courtroom in 21st-century Toronto. Leah Jarvis is a fledgling lawyer working for a brilliant but cantankerous immigration specialist whose latest case, taken on behalf of the Canadian government, involves assembling enough evidence to deport an elderly pensioner back to his native Belarus. But there’s still plenty of room for writers who aren’t marquee names - at least not yet.Ĭonsider, for example, Judith McCormack, whose THE SINGING FOREST (Biblioasis, 302 pp., paper, $16.95) blends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with a warm, wry, almost Anne Tyler-esque depiction of a young woman’s attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families. Plenty of high-profile authors are serving up historical fiction this season, including Colm Toibin, Lauren Groff, Anthony Doerr and Jonathan Franzen.
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