Book Buzz: Bog Queen by Anna North

southernbooklady

6 months ago

I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too.
― Anna North, Interview with Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Edition

What booksellers are saying about Bog Queen

Bog Queen follows two singular women thousands of years apart. One is an anthropologist called in to identify the body of the other, a druid at the dawn of the Roman occupation of Albion. Both women struggle to fit in to the world around them and both are living at a time of great change. Tying them together is an amorphous, timeless bog of moss. This book will make you think about your connection to the people and world around you and shows the complexity in every decision made. Nothing is black and white and it never has been. Please read this book, I loved it.
― Chelsea Bauer, Union Ave Books in Knoxville, Tennessee | BUY
In Bog Queen by Anna North, a forensic anthropologist unearths a centuries-old body from a peat bog, unraveling the buried life of a woman whose story echoes across time. Through interwoven narratives of past and present, the novel explores the fragility of civilization, the rise and fall of power, and our fleeting place in Earth’s vast history. A haunting work of climate fiction, Bog Queen invites readers to reflect on land, legacy, and the illusions of permanence.
― Jamie Southern, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
I love a bog mystery and read this in one sitting. Story is told through the viewpoint of a present-day forensic anthropologist, a druid from the past, and my favorite part, for the bog moss.
― Heather Giese, Reading Rock Books in Dickson, Tennessee| BUY
Anna North has written a tale with mysteries from a body found in the bog, believed to be 2,000 years old, and today’s struggle for the environment and development. Agnes is a young American forensic anthropologist who is hired to help identify a body believed to be buried in the bog from 1961, and instead dates the remains as from the Druidic order of Celtic Europe, over 2,000 years old. The mystery of the distant past and today’s conflict will haunt all who open these pages.
― Nancy Pierce, Bookmiser in Marietta, Georgia | BUY

About Anna North

Anna North is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award–winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.

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