• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and Europe, Frye Academy Award, and Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Shortlisted, CLA Young Adult Book Award, Red Maple Award, and University of Canberra Book of the Year
Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Award

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast.

What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer's field. Another is found in the cemetery. A man with surveying equipment is spotted eating lunch near Pokiok Falls. The residents of Haverton soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat.

Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason's keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.

RIEL NASON is a Canadian novelist and textile artist. Her acclaimed debut novel The Town That Drowned won the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize for Canada and Europe, and the 2012 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for several other literary awards as well as longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, All the Things We Leave Behind, was published in September, 2016. Riel’s original quilts have been exhibited across Canada including being shown twice at Quilt Canada (the National Juried Show). Nason grew up in Hawkshaw, NB, and now lives in Quispamsis, NB, with her husband, son, daughter and cats.

Riel Nason's profile page

• Short-listed, University of Canberra Book of the Year
• Winner, Frye Academy Award
• Long-listed, IMPAC Dublin Award
• Short-listed, CLA Young Adult Book Award
• Winner, Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
• Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and Europe
• Short-listed, Red Maple Award