The Scent of the Queengrass

Book excerpt: Meet one William Fennyman. Born in 1908 in rural North Dakota, William is a person torn between gazing back to the past and looking to the future. After the loss of his father in the trenches of WWI, William and his family move in with their abusive Uncle George. Yet a violent incident soon leaves his older brother, Phillip, badly injured, and William is thus sent in his stead to a far off private school: Turnbrook Academy. At Turnbrook, William’s constant bullying and sense of isolation begin to change his outlook on life for the worst, especially with regards to his new and frightened perception of memory and the past. As the years go by and he grows into a man of his own, however, he slowly begins to understand that growing up is nothing without the memories we create along the way. Rich in metaphor and chalk full of lived-in characters and beautiful dialogue, “The Scent of the Queengrass” applies eternal philosophical questions to a starkly intimate portrait of a boy coming to terms with what it means to live alongside the constant motion of time itself.