Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize, named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024 and shortlisted for the 2025 Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes
Evocative, magical and luminously written, The Cure for Drowning is not only a brilliant, boundary-pushing love story but a Canadian historical novel that boldly centres queer and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways.
Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell through the river ice and drowned—only to be nursed back to life by their mother’s Celtic magic. A daredevil in boy’s clothes, Kit chafes at every aspect of a farmgirl’s life, driving that same mother to distraction with worry about where Kit will ever fit in. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant German-Canadian doctor’s daughter, moves to town with her parents in April 1939, Rebekah has no doubt as to who 19-year-old Kit is. Soon she and Kit, and Kit’s older brother, Landon, are drawn tight in a love triangle that will tear them and their families apart, and send each of them off on a separate path to war.
Landon signs up for the Navy. Kit, now known as Christopher, joins the Royal Air Force, becoming a bomber navigator relied on for his luck and courage. Rebekah serves with naval intelligence in Halifax, until one more collision with Landon changes the course of her life and draws her back to the McNair farm—a place where she’d once known love. Fallen on even harder times, the McNairs welcome all the help she is able to give, and she believes she has found peace at last. Until, with the war over, Kit and Landon return home.
Told in the vivid, unforgettable voices of Kit and Rebekah, The Cure for Drowning is a powerfully engrossing novel that imagines a history that is truer than true.
As Heard On:
CBC’s The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing
How I Wrote This with Pamela Hensley
Praise for “The Cure for Drowning”
“Brimming with magic and historical detail, The Cure for Drowning is a rare wonder of a book. A profound exploration of lives entwined, it is, at once, a page-turning read and a richly imagined study of love—the kind that overcomes and endures, and ultimately transforms us into who we’re meant to be.”
Ami McKay
Bestselling author of The Birth House, The Virgin Cure, and The Witches of New York
“The Cure for Drowning is a captivating and utterly engrossing work of historical fiction—intricately crafted, epic in scope and yet astonishingly intimate. In riveting prose, infused throughout with magic, Paylor renders characters who are painfully, exquisitely human; who traverse landscapes as diverse as a rural family farm in Ontario, jazz clubs in Halifax and the airfields of Europe during World War II, and yet who feel as familiar as neighbours. Evocative of the works of Ann-Marie MacDonald and Alice Munro, The Cure for Drowning has all the makings of a modern classic; a debut that is as grounded as it is ground-breaking, as tender as it is thrilling. To anyone who has ever wondered what makes a Great Canadian Novel, Paylor has delivered the answer.”
Jasmine Sealy
Author of The Island of Forgetting, winner of the Amazon First Novel Award
“Loghan Paylor takes us on a journey of history, the complexity of family, both the ones we’re born into and the ones we choose, and the intoxication of queer love. This novel is deftly written and propulsive; the fantastical as important in detail as everything else. I’ll be thinking about this novel for years to come.”
Jessica Johns
Best-selling author of Bad Cree
“Loghan Paylor’s lush scenes and exquisite sentences illuminate an important aspect of society largely invisible in historical fiction. Kit and Rebekah’s swirling life paths portray queer and trans people as integral parts of our collective history, even while they are forced to remain hidden. Yearning for love, acceptance and home propel this vivid narrative, in which where families can be more cruel than strangers, silence can be the loudest form of allyship, and a little bit of turquoise magic helps us realize ‘they knew who they were all along.’”
Tara McGuire
Author of Holden, After and Before
“…A rich, beautifully wrought family saga about love, truth and identity….This is a deeply moving book, filled with historic detail, vividly drawn descriptions, and layered with haunting insights about family, loyalty, and truth. An incredible Canadian novel. Highly recommended.”
Lucy E. M. Black
Author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet and The Brickworks.
