FICTION | COMING MARCH 2026
THE ORIGIN OF AVA
A Novel
by ANNIE LAMPMAN
“An urgent and passionate portrait of the redemptive power of nature, time, and chosen family.”
—CAROL PRICE, BookPeople of Moscow
Three lives are drawn together by fate, flight, and the healing power of nature.
Ava Waters has everything under control. She is a rising star in the world of ornithology, a respected professor, and comfortably in love with a fellow academic. But when her father and star student both die on the same day, Ava abandons everything and everyone she knows and retreats to her uncle’s birding casa in Ecuador.
Eleven-year-old Greer Groff is on the run in the wilderness of western Idaho. The only witness to an act of shocking violence, she must survive on her own using her wits, imagination, and only a dog and two llamas for company.
Ezra Kittredge is determined to escape the shadow of his felony conviction. He may have served his time, but he’s done waiting for freedom. He jumps parole on a container ship bound for Central America, willing to leave everything behind to escape a future defined by his past.
Subtly suffused with myth and woven together by ravens, The Origin of Ava is a timeless and timely reminder that however hard we try to break with the past, we may just be setting up a collision course with our truest selves.
March 2026 | Trade Paper Original ISBN: 9798890920201 | $18.95 | 360 pp | Trim: 5.25 x 8”
“A tough and gritty and richly observed story. All the more powerful when notes of compassion, camaraderie, grace and beauty break through. A remarkable piece of writing.”
—PHIL KLAY, Redeployment, National Book Award winner and honoree
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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ANNIE LAMPMAN is the author of the award-winning novel Sins of the Bees and the poetry chapbook Burning Time. Her short stories, poetry, and narrative essays have been published in seventy-some literary journals and anthologies, including Orion Magazine and The Massachusetts Review. Lampman holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho and has been awarded the 2020 American Fiction Award for Crime Thriller, the Dogwood Literary Award in Fiction, a Best American Essays “Notable,” and a Pushcart Prize special mention. She lives in Pullman, Washington, where she bird watches, grows a pollinator garden, and restores a National Historic Registry home.
PRAISE FOR THE ORIGIN OF AVA
“The Origin of Ava is a captivating exploration of loss and renewal. Lampman weaves unforgettable characters into a narrative that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit.”
—CHELSIA RICE, Montana Book Company
“An urgent and passionate portrait of the northern Idaho wilderness, its birdlife, and three of its human inhabitants, whose damaged lives intersect, revealing the redemptive power of nature, time, and chosen family.”
—CAROL PRICE, BookPeople of Moscow
“With a forest fire at our backs, Lampman’s masterful storytelling compels us across Pacific Northwest wilderness and beyond—with human longing and the beating of birds’ wings for company.”
—CHARLIE J. STEPHENS, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
“Lampman’s prose crackles with wildfire and renewal. The Origin of Ava celebrates the people and places and myths that form us, hold us, and always welcome us home.”
—MARTHA WILLIAMS, The Community Library in Ketchum, ID
“The Origin of Ava is a poignant exploration of how deeply and surprisingly we are connected to the earth and to each other.”
—ERICA NICOLE, Washington State University Library, Pullman
“Lampman has crafted a conversation between mythologies, landscapes, and continents, a novel that shows us the attainable grace beyond our deepest scars and the scars we inflict on each other and the natural world.”
—ROCHELLE SMITH, University of Idaho Library
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