Ring by Michelle Lerner
Bancroft Press, 2025
This stunning debut novel explores how the weight of grief can be immobilizing but also how just the possibility of hope might save a person’s life. Its non-binary narrator, Lee, journeys in middle age to a remote sanctuary near Attawapiskat, Canada, when they decide to end their own life after their young adult daughter dies.
Michelle Lerner is also the author of the poetry chapbook Protection (Poetry Box, 2021) and Ring consists of a series of titled, compressed chapters that are laid out very much like poems. This compassionate book is a page turner.
Lee makes a long trek to the snowy sanctuary in the same region of Northern Ontario where they had intended to travel with their daughter to see polar bears. Consumed by grief, their intent is to walk the seven pillars as others who are dying or wish to commit suicide have.
the idea of a place in the snow with no roads or nearby towns, where one could stay in silence and receive training for weeks or months before heading out into the snow, where each pillar in the snow represented a journey through a layer of the self, where the seventh pillar was the end of the line, and where all that was left was you, the snow, and the air—this was the only place where it seemed tolerable to exist…
Before Lee can walk the pillars, they must participate in sharing the chores of the house while receiving instruction in mindful and physical practices of the body. They soon find a deep connection with a dog named Ring who belongs to one of the other guests, a terminally ill man. Lee is acutely concerned about Ring’s welfare.
I woke with a light sweat on my face, confused until I realized it was pressed against Ring’s back. He was awake but not moving, just staring at the wall. I began petting his side slowly, my hand starting at his head and moving down his back, then repeating. Eventually, he leaned his head back and licked my hand. Then he stretched his front legs with a groan, sat up, and shook himself. This was the sign to get up. I wasn’t ready, but I followed his lead.
It is Ring who helps light the way for Lee to begin the process of healing, which first includes a new awareness. Then Lee harnesses the transformative capacity to imagine a life ahead. No spoilers here, but Lee receives a surprising, amazing gift in the last pages.
The manuscript for Ring was selected as a finalist for Book Pipeline’s Unpublished Contest and the Bridge Eight Fiction Prize, longlisted for the Dzanc Prize for Fiction, and chosen as a Notable Selection for the Chapter One Prize before it was published in 2025.
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Jennifer Poteet lives in Glen Ridge, NJ, and is a fundraiser for public radio. Her poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, The Paterson Literary Review, SWWIM, The Night Heron Barks, JAMA, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, Emily Dickinson’s Selfie (Bottlecap Press) and Sleepwalking Home (Dancing Girl Press). Jennifer is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review.