Melanie, a young graduate student, is grieving the loss of her mother and main support system when she discovers that her PhD funding has been cancelled. Then she meets Stone, owner of Winter Willow, an old mansion in her neighbourhood, and is offered a position as his personal assistant. Moving in with him during that snowy and isolating season not only creates a strange sleepiness that makes it difficult for Melanie to concentrate on her studies, but also serves to disrupt the life and routine of Stone and his housekeeper, Celeste. When Melanie begins a relationship with a fellow grad student, she is confronted with the choice between a future with him and her life at Winter Willow. This novel explores the moment when a life can change, the pivot upon which the future depends

Deborah-Anne Tunney is a short story writer, novelist, and poet and is the author of The View from the Lane and Other Stories and the novel Winter Willow.

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"The book is replete with insights about memory and art, and offers rich rewards to the reader" -Frances Boyle, The New Quarterly

"Deborah-Anne Tunney's Winter Willow is a sustained note of subdued tension, a gentle haunting, a wholly immersive story about what we lose and what we create" - PRISM International

"Winter Willow is an intriguing, compelling and thought-provoking debut novel . . . The descriptions of relentless snow and of Stone's lovely but doomed old house and garden, along with the beautiful writing, make this a fine and memorable novel." - Sonia Tilson, author of The Monkey Puzzle and The Disappearing Boy

"The story's eerie and atmospheric setting is exploited to stunning effect." - The Miramichi Reader