Horsefly

Theodore's world is shrinking. He cares for his grandfather, Emeril, whose dementia is increasingly tied to a cryptic wartime past. Outside, a record-breaking heatwave has turned Quebec into a pressure cooker of domestic rage and inexplicable public violence. In the shadow of this heat dome, the horseflies have arrived: large, predatory, and unnervingly persistent. To understand the infection taking hold of the province, Theodore must accompany Emeril back to Grosse Ile, a secret military base where, in 1942, a young entomologist was conscripted to develop a perfect biological carrier. Moving between experimental horrors of the 1940s and contemporary climate crisis, Mireille Gagne's novel is a visceral exploration of the predatory relationship between human violence and the natural world.