Heather Ramsay

A Room in the Forest

A debut novel by Heather Ramsay

Nineteen-year-old Lily knows she doesn’t belong at a dead-end job in her father’s  small-town Alberta furniture store, not when she’s been offered a job in the ancient forests of Haida Gwaii. But her search for a sense of place becomes more complicated when a band of tree planters she meets on the road question her assumptions about whose land she is moving towards. Once at the logging camp, the rugged work and her rough co-workers make her even more uncertain about where she fits in. 

While measuring trees, Lily sees a mysterious figure who disappeared into the forest years before. Is he a man or a myth? Everyone has a different opinion. With a logging protest looming, Lily’s co-worker Chaz—a young half-Haida man whose white father owns the logging camp—ditches his job in the forest. As she meets more locals and learns about the community, Lily discovers surprising secrets about her estranged mother’s time in the area—and that her connection to this place may not be what she thought. Do the rumours Lily keeps hearing about a mysterious hermit have anything to do with her? As more and more questions rise to the surface, Lily plunges deeper into the forest to find out.