A Wilderness of Secrets: Sommer Schafer’s HOPE Explores the Fragile Boundaries Between Past and Present

PORTLAND, OR — In HOPE, Sommer Schafer takes readers to the rugged, wind-battered edge of the world—Hope, Alaska—where an isolated island community’s residents cling to their chosen lives far from modern distractions, even as the past refuses to stay buried.

This novel-in-stories threads together surreal, darkly comic, and at times chilling portraits of Hope’s inhabitants: Blake Lindstrom, waging a petty war with his tree-felling neighbor from a 96-square-foot cliffside shed; a mayor running a covert meth operation; a therapist wrestling with an unshakable past; a family raising eleven children in their own invented religion; a witch aiding in magical revenge; and Tlingit descendants navigating intergenerational scars of colonialism. Even the roaming Bear—tied to ancestral lands that no longer love him—reminds us that no one escapes history’s reach.

Schafer’s storytelling illuminates the strange intimacy of small communities, the persistence of generational wounds, and the ways we both resist and reimagine our own histories. HOPE asks a haunting question: To what extent can we, should we, bury the past?

Sommer Schafer is the Senior Editor of The Forge Literary Magazine and author of THE WOMEN (Unsolicited Press, 2023). Her work has been widely published, including a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2019. She lives on Coast Miwok land with her family, a rescue dove, and a bearded dragon.

HOPE will be released by Unsolicited Press on November 25, 2025 in paperback and ebook formats. It will be available for purchase through the publisher, major retailers, and independent bookstores nationwide. Distribution by Asterism Books.