First Timers' Club: Kendra Langford
Writer and Billings, Montana, city council member Kendra Langford Shaw based her first novel on her younger days growing up among the fjords of the Alaskan coast. She began writing short stories about her life there while earning a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Michigan and, over the course of the past decade, melded those stories into her first novel.
“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” was published on May 12. Shaw will travel to Spokane this week to discuss her life, her career and her new book.
The Life And Times Of A Citizen Of 'North Zone'
Kendra Langford Shaw was born in Alaska, grew up there and in Montana, studied writing at the universities of Montana and Michigan and served fellowships in New England.
Shaw's Debut Novel
Shaw told Billings TV station KTVQ that she had worked on her debut novel for the past decade. “Even while I’ve been on city council, this is what I’ve been doing,” she said.
She said she began developing a short story while working on her master’s degree at the University of Michigan. “By the time I got to my thesis, I’d written, I don’t know, a series of like eight connected stories,” she said. “My thesis adviser was like, ‘Kendra, this is actually a novel’.”
“My father, a music teacher, delivered musical instruments to bush schools and I began this novel imagining one of the float planes he flew in going down,” Shaw told People magazine. “What would’ve happened to all those instruments over time? And what if instead of one plane, thousands had met the same fate? How would that have affected the local economy and one family’s ability to navigate peaks and booms over generations?”
“This book is set in the Territory of the Arctic where climate change can no longer be ignored and, like the renovated bed-and-breakfast I grew up in, the Spahr family house is in a constant state of turmoil.”
The result is an “expansive, exciting, and all-around excellent debut ... Unpredictable and immersive,” said a starred review at Kirkus Reviews.
“Shaw sure-footedly traverses slippery emotional terrain and dives deep below the surface as she explores strong undercurrents of family and home,” Kirkus continued. “This moving, charmingly idiosyncratic novel, set upon icy terrain, is sure to melt hearts.”
“For readers of Karen Russell, Maggie Shipstead, and Eowyn Ivey, (this is) an exuberant, highly imaginative epic about a family that settles, against all odds, in the far reaches of the Arctic and the unexpected industry that keeps them afloat for generations,” wrote Bookshop.org.
“A blast of fresh polar air to the fiction landscape,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s an utterly engrossing read from Shaw.”
It’s “an inventive debut,” wrote Publishers Weekly. “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.”
“If you love multi-generational epics with big heart, this is for you,” wrote Town and Country.
Kendra Langford Shaw In Spokane
Shaw will be the guest of The Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages book club at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Montvale Event Center at 1019 W. First Avenue in Spokane.
For general admission tickets, VIP packages including a 6 p.m. author reception and a signed book or free tickets for students: