The Other Valley

It’s easy to draw me into a book with a unique, off-kilter world. So it’s no surprise that The Other Valley, with its fascinating puzzle-logic and strange mores, immediately drew me in.

In this world, time plays by different rules. Ten nearly identical valley communities sit side by side. However, each is on a different axis of time. The valley to your east is twenty years in the future, the valley to your west is twenty years in the past. Under special circumstances, citizens of one valley may visit another. But trips must be kept brief, under strict oversight of trained personnel; and above all, don’t interact with anyone in the other valley during your visit.

A young woman training to be one of those charged with guiding visitors from her valley to its east and west counterparts is at first fascinated by all she learns about the many secret rules governing her world. She thrills at the intellectual challenge and discipline required to uphold order. But then as she learns more, she realizes just how much is at stake and begins to question her investment in the status quo…

If you could travel forwards or backwards twenty years in time, would you? What would be the repercussions? Read on for a brilliant and highly moving investigation. This story is no mere thought exercise. It brims with ever so human questions and the thrill of trying to make one’s own path. Even—perhaps especially—when the whole world seems against it.

Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town. Except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.

When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present.

Edme—who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile—is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.