They say Dor’s family is cursed. The house her great-great grandfather built on the south side of St. John’s has never been at peace; the old people think it lies on a fairy path. Ever since electricity came to the island, things have worsened, and experiments in the brand-new technology of radio put her family in real peril. In December 1901, Marconi arrives in Newfoundland with a secret mission: to receive the first wireless trans-Atlantic radio signal. Disguised as a boy, Dor joins his team. Then the Little Strangers kidnap her mother. Must Dor sabotage Marconi's experiments to save her?

Kate Story is a writer and theatre artist who was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Uncanny occurrences were not unheard-of growing up in the house on the Southside Road built by Kate's great-great grandfather. Having fled to the mainland at sixteen, Kate keeps coming home to see family, do the occasional performance work, and get the occasional fit of the shudders. Kate lives in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario, where the shudders are fuel for the writing and performance work.

Previous novels include Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore, This Insubstantial Pageant, and the YA fantasy duology Antilia.

Kate's fiction has won the Sunburst Award's honourable mention, been a CBC Literary Award finalist, and has appeared in World Fantasy and Aurora Award-winning collections. Kate is also a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation's K.M. Hunter Artist Award for work as a theatre writer, performer, and creator.

Kate Story's profile page

“Yet, anchored by the sweet love story of Clare and Dor, the dreamily atmospheric descriptions of the historical setting, and the appealing characters—including an otherworldly Reverend and his talking crow, Oberon—there is plenty to spur readers on. … A sprawling, lyrical historical fantasy.”

Kirkus Reviews

The result is constantly disconcerting—in a good way. It’s as though time has swallowed its own tail, turning St. John’s into a sci-fi setting for a gender-bending tale of adventure that reads like a cross between Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. All of the characters come fully alive, from the plucky Dor/Jack, through her/his family and friends, the people of St. John’s, all the way down to Marconi himself, a dour man with not much penchant for the foibles and foolishness of the young. This is a compelling work, wonderful in its execution.

Urchin is a bold and visionary tale that breaks as many rules as it follows

With every breath of the story you feel the high winds, you see the crashing waves, you stumble on rocks, and you hear the Newfoundland voice [...] And, through it all, is the personal whisper: “Who am I? What am I? Am I even ok?

Deborah Furchtgott