Coming August 6, 2024! My second novel, The Leap Year Gene will be published by HarperCollins Canada, and as The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley, by Union Square Press, in the United States.
Click HERE to preorder in Canada
Click HERE to preorder in the United States
About the Book
From the author of The Quintland Sisters, a sweeping, imaginative historical epic that follows the remarkable lives of the McKinleys, a family forever altered by daughter Kit’s secret.
February 29, 1916. A baby girl is born—but as the months and years go by, Kit McKinley inexplicably ages just one year for every four.
Her mother Lillian, a fledgling botanist, fears that Kit’s condition will catch the attention of Lillian’s fellow suffragettes, who have embraced the eugenics craze sweeping North America targeting unfit, unwed mothers and “defective” children. For decades, Kit and her family must keep on the move to conceal her secret and protect her from the unwanted attention of Nazi scientists, nosy doctors, Big Pharma and the insatiable news media that is always hunting for the next sensational story.
When Kit finally reaches her teens and can pass for an adult, she must decide whether she wants to stay perpetually on the run or stay put and form lasting ties. The only problem is Will Katzen, whose life—first as a baby, then as a boy, and then as a man—keeps intersecting with hers, complicating every instinct she has to flee, or to love.
Part medical mystery, part love story, The Leap Year Gene is an unforgettable tour de force that traces the past century’s burgeoning understanding of genetics, eugenics and what constitutes “normal” while exploring the tensions, losses, love and sense of duty that can bind families together or split them apart.
Praise for The Leap Year Gene / The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley
“The Leap Year Gene is an astonishingly beautiful, wonderfully unique, completely seductive novel about a woman who ages one year for every four. It is also a sweeping and memorable portrait of the 20th century: eugenics, genetics, World Wars, feminism, politics, world travel, and much more. Most of all, it is a novel about love and devotion — among families, friends, and lovers — against the backdrop of a persistent violence against people who are judged to be born different. I could not put this novel down.”
—Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes
The Leap Year Gene is a marvel. Spanning decades and continents, it shines new light on the essential bond of human empathy, exposing the burdens and immeasurable blessings of love. A fresh and unforgettable novel about what we can’t help but lose in this life – and what lives on.
—Alissa York, author of Far Cry
“The Leap Year Gene is a capriciously imagined historical epic that captures the essence of a century through the remarkable life of Kit McKinley. A skilled researcher, Wood deftly weaves genetic discovery and society’s fascination with eugenics into a highly unique, engrossing tale of love and family.”
—Cathy Marie Buchanan, New York Times bestselling author of The Painted Girls
“In The Leap Year Gene, Shelley Wood offers a deeply heartfelt account of the McKinley family’s complex relationship with time and societal change. With an intriguing blend of scientific insight and emotional resonance, Wood’s novel is a poignant portrayal of kinship and the perennial search for meaning and belonging.”
—Ellen Keith, author of #1 international bestseller The Dutch Wife
*******
The Quintland Sisters went on sale March 5, 2019 and was an instant bestseller on the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star Canadian bestsellers list, holding the #1 spot for its first five weeks in print. The French edition, Auprès Des Jumelles Dionne translated by Sophie Cardinal-Corriveau and published by Éditions Hurtubise, came out April 28, 2021. Auprès Des Jumelles Dionne est la version française publiée aux Éditions Hurtubise, le 28 avril, 2021.
Find reader questions for The Quintland Sisters HERE.
Praise for The Quintland Sisters
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. . . . I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.”
— Joanna Goodman,
author of The Home for Unwanted Girls
“Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family.”
— Elise Hooper,
author of The Other Alcott and Learning to See
“Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.”
— Heather Young, author of The Lost Girls
“Fact and fiction are seamlessly blended and a beautiful, tragic mystery is unspooled. This is a gorgeously written novel about miracles, love, and resilience.”
– Marissa Stapley, author of Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining
“A charming and well-researched . . . tale of love and survival.
-Kirkus Reviews
“Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences.”
– Publishers Weekly
*****
In Shelley Wood’s fiction debut, readers are taken inside the devastating true story of the Dionne Quintuplets, told from the perspective of one young woman who meets them at the moment of their birth.
Reluctant midwife Emma Trimpany is just 17 when she assists at the harrowing birth of the Dionne quintuplets: five tiny miracles born to French farmers in hardscrabble Northern Ontario in 1934. Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.
Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.
As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war. Steeped in research, The Quintland Sisters is a novel of love, heartache, resilience, and enduring sisterhood—a fictional, coming-of-age story bound up in one of the strangest true tales of the past century.
Amazon
Amazon Canada
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Indigo (Canada)
Have a bookclub? I’d be delighted to join you over Skype. Contact me for details at shelley [at] shelleywood.ca