“A Story of Mothers, Monsters, and the Science of Longing” — Read an Excerpt from Kirsten Kaschock’s AN IMPOSSIBILITY OF CROWS

Now available from University of Massachusetts Press is Kirsten Kaschock's AN IMPOSSIBILITY OF CROWS, a novel that "blends gothic horror and literary fiction in a compelling story of mothers, monsters and the science of longing."

Like Frankenstein, the novel is written in an epistolary form. Says Kaschock: “As a professor of creative writing, learning about early novels has inspired me to look backwards even as I write science-fiction about the now and the future. Many early novels also included different types of writing–they were not so straightforward in their presentation of plot. To tell a life fully, maybe you need various kinds of materials. Also, as a poet, I admit I think in fragments: smaller, more concentrated bits than many novelists. Those elements divide the narrative in that way actually feels really natural to me, and it also happens to be true to the history of the novel form.”

For Daily Dead readers, we're excited to share with you an excerpt that you can read right now!

A story of mothers, monsters, and the science of longing

In this daring and evocative tale, Agnes Krahn, a chemist trained in Philadelphia, returns to her childhood home after the death of her father. Just a stone's throw from the haunted fields of Gettysburg, the small town of Letort, Pennsylvania is where the Krahn family has lived for six generations—bound by twisted folk wisdom and an uncanny kinship with the crows that loom over their land.

Back in the grim farmhouse of her youth, Agnes is drawn into the strange legacy she tried to leave behind. When she discovers an abandoned nest in the barn, she becomes consumed by a scientific—and deeply personal—experiment: to breed a crow large and intelligent enough to carry her daughter, Mina, to a freedom Agnes has never known herself. As the bird grows, so does its terrifying potential—manifest in language, cunning, and a violent will of its own. What begins as a gesture of love and liberation turns darkly obsessive, echoing the dangerous ambition of Frankenstein’s monster and the generational trauma buried in the soil of her family’s past.

A thoroughly modern, feminist novel, this is a story of mothers and daughters, inheritance and isolation, and the thin line between care and control. It confronts themes of self-harm and self-preservation, as well as memory and myth, in a narrative as visceral and uncanny as the bird that rises at its heart.

About the Author: "KIRSTEN KASCHOCK, a Pew Fellow in the Arts and Summer Literary Seminars grand prize winner, is the author of one previous novel, Sleight, and six poetry collections: Unfathoms, A Beautiful Name for a Girl, The Dottery, Confessional Science-fiction: A Primer, Explain This Corpse (Lynx House Press), and AutoPortrait (as flotsam)."

---

To read the excerpt, click on the cover below or visit: https://dailydead.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Daily-Dead-Excerpt-An-Impossibility-of-Crows.pdf

To purchase AN IMPOSSIBILITY OF CROWS, visit: https://www.umasspress.com/9781625349255/an-impossibility-of-crows/