One Night Two Souls Went Walking

“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.

Publication date: November 10, 2020

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Page count: 216 pages 

ISBN: 9781566895972

Ellen Cooney is the author of ten previous novels. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Ontario Review, New England Review, and many other journals, and have been included several times in The Best American Short Stories anthologies. 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 MIT. A native of Massachusetts, she lives on the Phippsburg Peninsula in midcoast Maine.

An NPR Favorite Book of 2020

A Kirkus Best Fiction of 2020

A Newsweek Must-Read Book of Fall 2020

A Bustle Best Book of Fall 2020

A Millions Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2020

“Shimmering, remarkable. . . . A triumph of a novel, and one that arrives at the perfect time.”

—Michael Schaub, NPR

“Cooney's warm and hopeful novel is a salve for these times.”

—Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek

“A wonderful and memorable novel that lingers long and deep in the mind of readers, making us reconsider our concepts of faith, kindness, and what exactly a soul is, anyway.”

—Jim Carmin, The Star Tribune

“Wise and warm. . . . This is a quiet book, steady, gentle, present, one that grapples with the matter-of-fact here and now, and wades, with bravery and wonder, into the mysteries that make us human.”

—Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe

“The perfect novel to combat pandemic angst. ”

—Kirkus, starred review

“Cooney’s novel expands the concept of what’s possible, imagining hope where there is none and pointing always toward the light.”

—Mari Carlson, BookPage starred review

“The word ‘soul’ is a frequent presence in this novel, a kind of familiar spirit.”

—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“A novel to sink into, one that’s not comforting so much as it makes us feel and think about being in the world, about things like solace, and heartbreak and souls.”

—Deborah Dundas, The Toronto Star

“Now, more than ever, we need to be reminded that hope prevails—and this novel does exactly that.”

—Carolyn Quimby, The Millions

“Illuminating. . . . A memorable collage of souls in need.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A cohesive, thought-provoking story that reveals rare moments of light and connection.”

—Catherine Thureson, Foreword Reviews

“A poetic story of wandering souls, filled with the beauty of human encounters and the sorrows of departure.”

—Dorthe Nors

“One Night Two Souls Went Walking has the familiarity of old fairy-tale books, the steadiness of Tove Jansson, the abstraction of Silvina Ocampo, and something entirely new. A lovely and grave novel.”

—Kate Bernheimer

“Radiant, humane, splendidly joyous.”

—Alyson Hagy