Elita: A Novel [Paperback]

An American literary take on the Nordic noir genre

Unfolding during the moody Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, we follow Bernadette Baston, scholar of child development and language acquisition, as she travels to a penitentiary on the remote island Elita in the Puget Sound to consult on a curious case: two guards have discovered an animal-like adolescent girl living alone in the cold woods beyond the prison’s walls. There are few answers, but many people who know more than they are saying. According to official reports, the girl, dubbed Atalanta, does not speak. Is her silence protecting someone? The prison warden, court-appointed guardian, and police detective embroil Bernadette in resolving a secret that the tight-knit island community has long held, and her investment in the girl’s case soon becomes more personal than professional. As a mother, wife, and woman bound by mid-twentieth-century expectations, Bernadette strategizes to retain the fragile control she has over her own freedom, identity, and future, which becomes inextricably tied to solving Atalanta’s case.

Elitatakes us on the mysterious mission of a scholar of child development who journeys to a remote island in hopes of solving the case of Atalanta, a silent, wild girl living in the woods near a penitentiary. 

KIRSTEN SUNDBERG LUNSTRUM’smost recent collection of fiction,What We Do with the Wreckage,won the 2017 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her two previous collections areSwimming with StrangersandThis Life She’s Chosen,which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick of the Month. Elitais her first novel. She lives near Seattle.

 Named by NPR as a 2025 Book We Love Listed among the 50 Notable Works of Fiction from 2025 by theWashington Post Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize

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