An AMAZON.CA Top 100 Book of 2013 A January Magazine Best Book of Fiction 2013

"A gorgeous debut."-JOSEPH BOYDEN, author of Through Black Spruce and The Orenda

At the hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Bryce is learning to predict the worst. Racing heart: infection, probably malaria. He'll send Iris for saline. Shortness of breath? TB. Another patient rolled to the ward. And the round swellings, the rashes with dimpled centres, the small rough patches on a boy's foot? HIV. Iris willmake him comfortable. They'll move on.

Then there will be sleeplessness, rationed energy, a censuring of hope: the doctor's disease. Iris sees that one all the time.

Henry Bryce has come to Blantyre to work off the grief he feels for his old life, but he can't adjust to the hopelessness that surrounds him. He relies increasingly upon Sister Iris's steady presence. Yet it's not until an accident brings them both to a village outpost that Bryce realizes the personal sacrifices Iris has made forher medical training, or that Iris in turn comes to fathom the depth of Henry's loss.

The Strength of Bone is the story of a Western doctor, a Malawian nurse, and the crises that push both of them to the brink of collapse. With biting emotion and a pathological eye for detail, novelist and medical doctor Lucie Wilk demonstrates how, in a place where knowledge can frustrate as often as it heals, true strength requires the flexibility to let go.

Advance Praise for The Strength of Bone

"Insupple, beautiful prose, Lucie Wilk recounts a doctor's struggle with technology and faith, and with the mysteries of death and love...The Strength of Bone is an extraordinary look at the clash of worlds."-ANNABEL LYON, author of The Golden Mean and The Sweet Girl

Lucie Wilk's profile page

Lucie Wilk grew up in Toronto and completed her medical training in Vancouver. Her short fiction has been nominated for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Anthology, longlisted for a CBC Canada Writes literary prize, and has appeared in Descant, Prairie Fire and Shortfire Press. She is working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She practices medicine and lives with her husband and two children in London, UK.

"Wilk illuminates the differences between Malawian culture and that of the West while capturing both the feverdream beauty and desperation of the country...Readers who enjoyed Abraham Verghese's 'Cutting for Stone' may want to give this book a try." - Library Journal

"A lyrical debut novel" - CultMontreal

"so very worthwhile" - January Magazine

"If you suppose [The Strength of Bone] is a love story across racial and political lines, you're underestimating the inventiveness and grace of Lucie Wilk's meditative debut. Wilk instead works with what is unspoken, hinted at, and left to the imagination...anything but typical." - Kamal Al-Solaylee, Quill & Quire

"Masterfully literary." - National Post

Wilk aptly captures the bleakness of medical crises in Africa...[her] prose never entirely relinquishes its rational edge, and so many of the tensions which move the story remain necessarily unresolved. This is a book honest in its brutality, though brightened by hopeful sparks." - ForeWord

"Deeply felt but never sentimental, thoughtful but not preachy, Lucie Wilk's first novel, The Strength of Bone, delivers strong characters involved in a page-turning plot. Imagery drawn from African and Canadian settings, and also from the world of medicine, enriches the novel throughout. A memorable story." - Cynthia Flood, 49th Shelf