A novel by Ellen Cooney

November 10, 2020 • 5.5 x 8.25 • 216 pages • 978-1-56689-597-2

“I believe in expecting light. That’s my job.” A hospital chaplain offers compassion to her patients over the course of one eventful night shift, and finds some for herself, too.

A young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-ready dog who may or may not be a ghost. As she tends to the souls of her patients—young and old, living last moments or navigating fundamentally altered lives—their stories provide unexpected healing for her own heartbreak. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney (The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances) returns to Coffee House Press with a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility.

About the Author

Ellen Cooney is the author of nine previous novels, including The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (Mariner Books, 2015). Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Ontario Review, New England Review, and many other journals, and were listed several times in Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and has taught creative writing at Boston College, the Harvard Extension School, and most recently as Writer in Residence at MIT. A native of Massachusetts, she lives on the Phippsburg Peninsula in mid-coast Maine.

Praise for One Night Two Souls Went Walking