An original book.

Westerbeke is a full-time librarian who wrote this debut novel in his spare time.

Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.

When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days—nor return to a place where she’s already been.

From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live.

But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s…

It was inspired by some of his favourite authors: Somerset Maugham, Thornton Wilder, Dostoyevsky, particularly The Brother’s Karamozov, Jack London. More recently Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Emily St. John Mandel.

Click PLAY or see the author explain the book on YouTube.