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Eutopia:

A Novel of Terrible Optimism
Front Cover
28 Reviews
HarperCollins, Apr 10, 2012 - Fiction - 321 pages

The year is 1911.

In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal—with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all.

Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother’s cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation—and the barest thread of hope.

At the edge of the utopian mill town of Eliada, Idaho, Doctor Andrew Waggoner faces a Klansman’s noose and glimpses wonder in the twisting face of the patient known only as Mister Juke.

And deep in a mountain lake overlooking that town, something stirs, and thinks, in its way: Things are looking up.

Eutopia follows Jason and Andrew as together and alone, they delve into the secrets of Eliada—industrialist Garrison Harper's attempt to incubate a perfect community on the edge of the dark woods and mountains of northern Idaho. What they find reveals the true, terrible cost of perfection—the cruelty of the surgeon's knife—the folly of the cull—and a monstrous pact with beings that use perfection as a weapon, and faith as a trap.

  

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Review: Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

User Review - Goodreads

This was well written and imaginative but hey holy hillbillies it was too way out. The story revolves around a utopian society in Idaho that goes awry, as such things are wont to do. The sub-plot (co ...

Review: Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

User Review  - Will - Goodreads

So, David Nickle wrote a set of short stories called Monstrous Affections, which are chilly and brilliant and disturbingly rendered. So when I saw Eutopia, I picked it up. Didn't have to think twice ... Read full review

All 24 reviews »

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Contents

PART I Nurture
1 Mister Juke
2 A Damn Germ
3 The Horror at Cracked Wheel
4 Utopias Daughter
5 Baby Wakes
6 The Feeger Girls
7 The Hippocratic Oath
17 The Dauphins Women
18 Compassion Community Hygiene
19 The Rite of Spring
20 The Secret Terror
21 The Germe de grotte
22 The Prodigal
23 The Incident with the Shotgun
24 The Test of Faith

8 The Lesson of Minos
9 The Quarantine Obscenity
10 The Autopsy
11 Love Among the Feegers
12 Auntys Tears
13 The Mercy of Sam Green
14 The Faerie Kings Bride
15 A Wicked Cut
PART II Nature
16 Saint Lothar
25 The Gospel According to Nils
26 The Pickle Jar
27 Gods and Oracles
28 The Old Man
29 The Oracle Frets
30 Rapture of the Juke
31 The Cruelty of Sam Green
32 Death and Resurrection
Acknowledgements
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

DAVID NICKLE Is a Toronto-based author and journalist whose fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies like Cemetery Dance, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, the Northern Frights series and the Queer Fear series. Some of it has been collected in his book of stories, Monstrous Affections. His first solo novel, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, led the National Post to call him “a worthy heir to the mantle of Stephen King” and the novel was a finalist for the Compton Crook, Aurora, and Sunburst Awards in 2012. His most recent novel, Rasputin’s Bastards, was called “supernatural eeriness at its best” by Library Journal. His next novel, The ’Geisters, will be released by ChiZine Publications in June 2013. In addition to writing fiction, Nickle also works as a reporter, covering Toronto municipal politics for a chain of community newspapers.

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