Justine Champine's short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review, Epoch, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a founding staff member of No Tokens Journal. She lives and writes in New York City, where she has served as an organiser on the NYC Dyke March Committee and at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in resource digitization. Knife River is her first novel.
Knife River is an intelligent literary mystery with a rich sense of place and a clever plot; but it is Champine's keenly-observed depiction of the aftermath of tragedy and the corrosive impact of loss that sets this novel apart -- Paula Hawkins Knife River is a delicious smoke curl of a novel: atmospheric, sharp, and skilled at twisting the reader's guesses in unimaginable ways -- Jodi Picoult A twisting, engrossing and beautiful mystery. Thrilling, yet also deeply moving, layered and powerful. * Chris Whitaker, bestselling author of We Begin at the End * I couldn't put Knife River down. An incredibly compelling literary mystery. Beautifully written. * Olivia Kiernan * Both a beguiling mystery and a tender exploration of sisterhood and first love, this beautiful, deep, winding road of a novel pulled me hard into its pages and wouldn't let me go. I was captivated by this debut. * Emma Styles, author of NO COUNTRY FOR GIRLS * Beautifully written, gripping and poignant, Knife River is a moving debut about love, women and buried secrets -- Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation Knife River is a gorgeous, magnetic portrait of two sisters whose lives are shattered by the loss of their mother. Part mystery, part investigation into the nature of loss, this novel is both startlingly beautiful and unputdownable. Justine Champine has written a knockout debut -- Danielle Trussoni