A gifted young Canadian writer makes her debut in the United States with a dark and spell-binding tale of erotic and pang-ridden legacy of forbidden love A handsome priest named August Day arrives in the well-ordered town of Mercy, Manitoba, to take over the church of St. Mary Immaculate. In the first days of his tenure he falls in love with the young bride of the town butcher. Their mutual obsession grows to the point that its aftermath leaves scars on the town decades and generations after their love affair is over. Alissa York has won several of Canada’s leading literary prizes for emerging young writers. Her latest novel, Effigy, about the Mountain Meadows massacre, in the Utah Territory in September 1857, was recently published. She lives with her husband in Winnipeg, Manitoba.