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A Glacier’s Guide to Dying

A Novel

Contributors

By Michelle Porter

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Nov 3, 2026
Page Count
256 pages
Publisher
Algonquin Books
ISBN-13
9781523538003

Price

$28.00

Robbie has spent most of life wondering about his real father, Mike, who long since left their family due to his struggles with visions and mistrust of the modern world. Robbie can’t forget how much he felt connected to him from his few visits, and not just because they share two differently colored eyes. But now, as he rescues his mother from encroaching wildfires, he’s determined to find his father. Robbie takes off to find answers, and when his uncle confesses that he last dropped Mike off at a glacier, he and his uncle head climb up the mountain of ice to see if Mike is there, and whether he’s still alive.

On the slopes of a huge glacier named Omega, Robbie navigates between fear and wonder as he starts hearing the ancient voice of the glacier giving him guidance. Has Robbie accessed a deep connection to the land, one he can trust? Or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father’s life?

Michelle Porter brings her profoundly moving sensibility and disarmingly funny voice to a powerful contemporary story of identity and belonging, loss and healing, within families and with the immortal land itself.


Michelle Porter

About the Author

 

MICHELLE PORTER’s debut novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story, won the 2024 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her previous books include the memoir Scratching River and Approaching Fire, a work of creative nonfiction about her great-grandfather, a fiddler from the Red River, which was shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award. She is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers and a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation; she lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, where she teaches creative writing and Métis Literature at Memorial University.
 

Learn more about this author