The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos

A BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER from The Spokane Spokesman-Review
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK from Alta

“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is a vividly imagined generational saga bursting with bold adventure and bottomless hope. Kendra Langford Shaw brilliantly evokes an unforgettable cast of dreamers, trailblazers, and pillagers on a quest for home in the luminous but brutal wilderness, where they all must discover that the real treasure is each other. A wholly original, utterly absorbing debut. I loved it.”
—Shelley Read, bestselling author of Go As a River

“If you love multi-generational epics (the story begins with Moose Bloomer, who travels to Alaska as a boy with his homesteading family and goes through his great-great-great-great-grandchildren) with big heart, this is for you.”
—Town and Country

“Magnificently imaginative and emotional, this is a wholly original multi-generational epic from a dazzling new voice.”
—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Bravo to Kendra Langford Shaw, who has written a funny, clever, heartfelt, imaginative, beautifully-heartbreaking novel. I love the way Shaw writes about family, nature, mythology and history, and I love every big-hearted character she created. A total stunner.”
—Annie Hartnett, author of The Road to Tender Hearts

“As wild as its title. . . . Buckle up.”
—Alta

“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is an exquisitely rendered tale of the generations who call an ever-changing Alaskan landscape home. I am full of admiration for Kendra Langford Shaw’s rich language, the taut weave of so many compelling voices, and above all, the stunning singularity of the world she has created.”
—Lily Brooks-Dalton, bestselling author of The Light Pirate and Ruins

“[An] expansive, exciting, and all-around excellent debut. . . . Unpredictable and immersive. . . . Shaw sure-footedly traverses slippery emotional terrain and dives deep below the surface as she explores strong undercurrents of family and home. This moving, charmingly idiosyncratic novel, set upon icy terrain, is sure to melt hearts.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“Shaw’s imagination is broad, her characters delightful, and their fates often painful but also transcendent. The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is a lovely profile of a singular, stark place and a small, tight cast of indelibly colorful characters: a heart-wrenching, unforgettable debut…[A] compulsively readable first novel of adventure and familial love.”
—Shelf Awareness

“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is a wondrously inventive, multi-generational epic, by turns playful and poignant, about the lives and objects we bequeath to the future. Shaw’s brilliant debut imagines an Arctic as fantastical as anything in the Florida of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia.”
—Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“Kendra Langford Shaw has created a world equal parts real and fantastical, evoking both our frontier-questing past and our ecologically uncertain future. Rowdy and boisterous, yet deeply heartfelt and thoughtful, this debut novel is a delight.”
—Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas

“An inventive debut. . . . Shaw weaves memorable folkloric elements such as pet sea lions and a piano that is 18 feet tall with a resonant story of a people contending with a vanishing way of life. It’s a singular tale of human perseverance.”
—Publishers Weekly