Lindsey Drager Livres

Tracking the evolution of Hansel and Gretel at seventy-five-year intervals that correspond with earth's visits by Halley's Comet, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores how stories are disseminated and shared, edited and censored, voiced and left untold. In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg's sister uses the tale as a surrogate for sharing a family secret only her brother believes. In 1835, The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm revise the tale to bury a truth about Jacob even he can't come to face. In 1986, a folklore scholar and her brother come to find the record is wrong about the figurative witch in the woods, while in 2211, twin space probes aiming to find earth's sister planet disseminate the narrative in binary code. Breadcrumbing back in time from 2365 to 1378, siblings reimagine, reinvent, and recycle the narrative of Hansel and Gretel to articulate personal, regional, and ultimately cosmic experiences of tragedy. Through a relay of speculative pieces that oscillate between eco-fiction and psychological horror, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores sibling love in the face of trauma over the course of a millennium, in the vein of Richard McGuire's Here and Lars von Trier's Melancholia.

Exploring the anxiety of change, the narrative follows aging librarians grappling with the decline of print in favor of digital media. Simultaneously, the grieving parents of a young girl who died near the library confront their feelings of loss. Interwoven are the poignant stories of a photographer and his deaf mathematician partner, both mourning each other. The novel delves into how various relationships—lovers, parents, and colleagues—navigate the challenges posed by societal progress, emphasizing the struggle to remember the past while embracing the new.