For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, a beautifully observed portrait of marriage, divorce, and reconciliation as an estranged couple embark on a road trip from small-town Ontario to B.C. to finally lay to rest the mystery that pulled them apart.

Kathleen and Yannick have not spoken for nineteen years, not since what happened with their daughter.

Now, there’s unexpected news from the other side of the country, and the call for a road trip they can only make together.

As they rattle over two thousand miles in a pick-up, an alluring history reveals itself: of begrudging love, headstrong children and hopeless searching, and of a unique bond that never really went away.

As they drive, bicker, and lose their way, an unexpected future for this once broken couple begins to emerge.

Moon Road captures the wonderment and grief of seeing children grow up; of recovering from long-buried pain, and rediscovering those most familiar to us; of learning to live and love in a whole new way.

SARAH LEIPCIGER is the author of the acclaimed novel The Mountain Can Wait. She won THIS Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt and her stories have been shortlisted for the Asham Award, the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, and the PRISM International Short Fiction Contest. She holds a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and an M.A. in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths at the University in London, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing, also at Goldsmiths. Born in Canada, she now lives in London, U.K., with her husband and three children, where she teaches creative writing in prisons.

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Praise for Moon Road:
One of CBC’s “64 Canadian Fiction Books to Read In Fall 2024”
One of The Globe and Mail’s “62 new titles to read this season”
"A brilliant, compassionate novel that unflinchingly lays bare what we can’t know about those we love and what we can’t forget. Moon Road is a masterpiece of self-assured, keenly-observant, heart-wrenching storytelling. Every page is a delight, leading to an ending that left me absolutely breathless. Beautiful, clever, captivating—a must read!"
—Shelley Read, author of Go As a River

"A whip-smart take on the classic road trip, with a compulsive bread-crumb plot, Moon Road is at once a candid portrait of aging, an astute primer on parenting, and a masterful novel of love, loss, and navigating life's darkest moments."
—CS Richardson, author of All the Colour in the World
"Moon Road is a story that confronts what it really means to be human—it’s about how love still burns after a long and hard time, about the unexpected ways that sadness lives within us, about longing for a time in life when something could still change. This book is intimate and tender in some ways, but so fierce and full in others—the Canadian landscapes, the tension of an estranged couple on a road trip, the mystery of a missing daughter. I just couldn’t put it down. Sarah Leipciger has written a brilliant, beautiful novel I’ll remember forever."
—Ashley Audrain, author of The Push and The Whispers

"When someone you love goes missing without a trace, how do you grieve? Kathleen and Yannick, an estranged couple, set out across Canada in a search for answers. This is the kind of novel that will take over your life—the story is as absorbing as it is transporting. Leipciger writes beautifully, precisely, and with so much heart. Those on the journey, both the couple and the reader, will find things they didn't realize they had lost.”
—Claire Cameron, author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal

"Read this! A love story, a tragedy, a road trip. Some of the best writing you'll read. Definitely one of my contenders for Books of the Year."
—Claire Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered Days, Bitter Orange, Unsettled Ground and The Memory of Animals
"A deeply humane story by one of my favourite writers. Tough, tender, wonderful."
—Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre
"A road trip into the human heart, wise and tough and generously alive, tracing through Kathleen and Yannick’s journey the slow alchemy by which loss tears people apart, and then sometimes brings them back together again."
—Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual and Cahokia Jazz
“A truly divine book, I loved both its simplicity and depth.”
—Prima

“A melancholy, meditative, and gorgeously written story about two people, and enduring love.”
—Woman & Home (UK)

“[L]yrical and hopeful. . . . Leipciger has written an intelligent, nuanced book. . . . It is, refreshingly, a novel for grown-ups.”
—The Times (UK)

“[A] complex and captivating novel.”
—Victoria Buzz

“Reminds me of Olive Kitteridge. And I loved the ending, how the author avoids turning it into a mystery whodunnit while still harnessing all the gripping momentum of one.”
―Susan Elderkin

“Delicately observed, forceful and moving, this story of love, family bonds and the agony of loss is utterly absorbing—and so beautifully written.”
―Lucy Atkins

“Kathleen is a wonderful character—spikey and obstinate, but also vulnerable and big-hearted.”
―Good Housekeeping

“Set against the monumental grandeur of the mountains, this is a deliberate slow burn, sensitive but unsentimental, with the central mystery secondary to the novel’s humane, memory-lingering exploration of life and hope in the shadow of loss.”
—Daily Mail (UK)

Praise for Sarah Leipciger:

“A consummate storyteller.”
—Rachel Joyce

“Sarah Leipciger captures the nature of solitude and stillness in a way that no other writer does.”
—Mark Haddon
“A deft and beautiful novel about all that is untameable and wild, in both the landscape and in ourselves.”
—Maggie O’Farrell, on The Mountain Can Wait