‘The Wonder’ hits shelves Sept. 20, 2016.
EW is excited to exclusively revealThe Wonders cover below, along with an excerpt from the first chapter.
The Wonderwill be released on Sept. 20, 2016.
Credit: Nina Subin
A driver was waiting.
Lib had known many Irishmen, soldiers.
But that was some years ago, so her ear strained now to make out the drivers accent.
He carried her trunk to what he called the jaunting car.
An Irish misnomer; nothing jaunty about this bare cart.
She put up her steel-frame umbrella against the drizzle.
This was better than the stuffy train, at least.
Go on, now!
The shaggy pony stirred.
Perhaps that was responsible for the drivers missing teeth too.
He made some remark about the dead.
I beg your pardon?
The dead centre, maam.
Lib waited, braced against the juddering of the cart.
Were in the exact middle of the country here.
Flat fields striped with dark foliage.
Sheets of reddish-brown peat; wasnt bog land known to harbour disease?
The occasional grey remains of a cottage, almost greened over.
Nothing that struck Lib as picturesque.
Clearly the Irish Midlands were a depression where wet pooled, the little circle in a saucer.
The jaunting car turned off the road onto a narrower gravel way.
The pattering on her umbrellas canvas became a continuous thrum.
Windowless cabins; Lib imagined a family with its animals in each, huddling in out of the rain.
At intervals a lane led off towards a jumble of roofs that probably constituted a village.
But never the right village, evidently.
Lib should have asked the driver how long the journey was likely to take.
She didnt put the question to him now in case the answer was,Still a long time yet.
Perhaps Lib was a temporary replacement for another nurse.
