Miss Archer: A Novel

“A Gothic novel with a flourish of the speculative, a tale so gripping it’s hard to believe this is a debut. The story contains many mysteries—the less said about those the better, untangling them is genuinely satisfying—though it’s principally concerned with the great, perhaps unanswerable question of what it is that makes us human."
— Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

An audaciously original and genre-bending debut novel from the mind of celebrated playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Jordan Harrison, about a young woman and the strange, brilliant boy she’s entrusted to raise.

Growing up in the Squares, Dre Archer was always told human history was over. Until the day a mysterious woman arrives, plucks her from all she knows, and recruits her as governess to an enigmatic five-year-old boy. Albie is rash, emotionally obtuse, and possibly a genius. He also believes the year is 1884—two centuries before Dre was born. Everyone working at his family’s grand Victorian manor strives to maintain the illusion, keeping the modern world safely outside their doors. Dre is expected to follow along and not ask questions.

At first, Dre works hard to embody her role as “Miss Archer,” with comportment lessons and corsets, like an actor in one of her favorite period dramas. But somewhere along the way, the performance begins to feel real—as does her bond with this singular boy. Slowly she is overwhelmed by questions: Why the weird adherence to the 19^th century, when it’s the dawn of the 22^nd? Who are her shadowy employers? And what is her job, really?

In her mounting determination to unlock these mysteries, Dre finds herself flouting the draconian rules of the house. As a series of Russian doll-like revelations brings her closer to the truth, Dre must go to dangerous lengths to protect her young charge, who she has, without quite meaning to, come to love as her own.

Never Let Me Go meets Rebecca in this surprisingly tender, precisely rendered, and propulsive literary debut. Blending speculative fiction with the Gothic tradition, Miss Archer deftly explores our yearning for the analog world as we tumble into the future, investigating the nature of individual genius—and what it truly means to be human.

“Witty and imaginative, Miss Archer got all of my neurons firing. Harrison conveys complex ideas in fluid prose to tell a story that was effortless to read and yet thought-provoking long after I put it down. A debut novel that is equal parts entertainment and invention.”
— Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown