Description

Edith grows up in her big sister Vivienne s shadow. While the beautiful Viv is forced by the girls overbearing mother to compete in child beauty pageants, plain-looking Edith follows in her father s footsteps: collecting oddities, studying coins, and reading from old books. When Viv rebels against her mother s expectations, Edith finds herself torn between a desire to help her sister and pursuing her own love for a boy who might love her sister more than he loves her. When Edith accepts a job at the National Gallery of Canada, she meets an elderly cryptozoologist named Theo who is searching for a bird many believe to be extinct. Navigating her way through Vivienne s dark landscape while trying to win Liam s heart, Edith develops an unlikely friendship with Theo when she realizes they might have more in common than she imagined; they are both trying to retrieve something that may be impossible to bring back to life. Nina Berkhout s The Gallery of Lost Species is about finding solace in unexpected places – in works of art, in people, and in animals that the world has forgotten.