I said, the pair of us look like some scratch n win tickets, and Earn said, More like scratch n lose.

Knickle is a young Islander with no friends, direction, or purpose in his life. When he drives to northern New Brunswick to pick up an acquaintances brother from a mental health hospital, the pair make a sudden decision to travel further west to try to find a life amidst the chaos of Upper Canada. In the big city of Tah-ron-ah for the first time, Knickle discovers love, hope, and profound loss.

A hilarious, sensitive, and heady working-class odyssey rife with metaphorical richness and references to literature, film, and 90s music, Your Breath in Charcoal peers into the mind of its irrepressible and relentlessly quotable East Coast everyman. A follow-up to Some Hellish, Herrings breathtaking Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize-winning debut novel, Your Breath in Charcoal marks yet another galvanizing entry into the East Coast literary canon.

Author

Nicholas Herrings head-spinning debut novel, Some Hellish, won the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Critics described it as heart-wrenchingly beautiful, irreverent, screwball, and inspired, and a winding, raucous ride. His writing has also appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead.

Herring graduated from St. Jeromes University with an honours degree in English Literature and attended the University of Toronto, where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. He lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island, where he works as a fisherman and a carpenter. Your Breath in Charcoal is Nicholas Herrings second novel.

Details

328 pages
Pub date: September 1, 2026